The Last Men On Earth
by Alice the Strange
Summary: "They're still there, the vans, the cars, the lorries. All empty, trains stuck in tunnels like rats that died sudden deaths underground. Nobody mourns a rat rotting in a tunnel. Nobody knows it's there. Now, there is nobody left to know." On the day the world ends, an army doctor and a consulting detective are the only humans that remain. Slash, post-apocalyptic angst, language.
1. ticking away the moments

Disclaimer: If I owned Sherlock, I'd have enough money to buy that velvet top hat I've had my eye on for the past few weeks. I also don't own Pink Floyd, who provided the chapter titles for this.

Summary: On the day the world ends, John and Sherlock are the only human beings that remain. Or so they think. But as they struggle for survival, slowly starting to rebuild their damaged lives, it becomes apparent that there is someone else - or rather, something else - out there still, living in the darkness, preying on them. And the hunt is only just beginning.

A/N: The chapters for this are quite short, because I don't have enough motivation to write really long chapters. I'll try and update every week or so. This story will be SLASH in later chapters – so if that squicks you, please stop here! Reviews are loved and welcomed, and flames will be sarcasmed at. Thank you. xx

* * *

_and not one will know of the war, not one  
will care at last when it is done  
not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,  
if mankind perished utterly  
and spring herself, when she woke at dawn  
would scarcely know that we were gone.  
_–sara teasdale

* * *

_one_

* * *

"It's raining again," says John.

He's right, as it happens. For the whole morning, the sky's been that mottled, depressing sort of grey that heralds a serious storm; the streets are wet and slippery with rain, the clouds overhead swollen with the promise of more. It's only now, though, that it really starts to come down in earnest, beating against the windscreen as if the very forces of nature are against them. The accuracy of John's remark doesn't stop it from being ever so slightly inane, and the moment he voices it he wishes it was possible to take it back.

For a moment, Sherlock doesn't respond – only stares ahead at the empty road, pupils contracted in the greyish light. Then he turns to John, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. "How fortunate I am," he says in dry tones, "in having a travelling companion of such overwhelming wisdom and intelligence."

"There's no need to be snarky." John shifts slightly, the map crackling on his lap, and glances out of the window at the green-and-grey landscape rushing past them. "I was just looking for something to say."

It's true. For the last forty-five minutes, the atmosphere in the car has been saturated with an almost tangible silence, so heavy that John can practically taste it. It's not an angry silence, or an awkward one; merely the kind that occurs when two people have entirely run out of things to say. That kind of silence happens a lot between them, and normally John doesn't mind it. Suddenly, though, he desperately wants it to lift – wants the reassurance of another voice, another presence, knowledge that he is not the only one left. And yes, it's ridiculous and illogical and Sherlock would probably scoff if John mentioned it, but that's how it is.

"It's a terrible conversation starter, anyway," Sherlock says. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why were you looking for something to say? As I see it, it's not particularly necessary. At least, not at the moment."

"Well…" John gropes futilely for a reason. "To…break the tension?"

For once, Sherlock looks a little confused, which is refreshing. "What tension?" he asks.

John shrugs. "Fair point."

Clearly giving the conversation up as a lost cause, Sherlock sighs, turns back to the wheel and swerves abruptly as they encounter yet another dead car – an Aston Martin this time, black and shiny and new. John's never really liked black cars (apart from the dependable London cabs, obviously). They always remind him of hearses.

He shudders suddenly, realising that this analogy may now be a lot more accurate that it initially sounded. Encountering other vehicles on the roads is never pleasant – it's eerie, somehow, and never fails to chill him – but at the same time he's glad they're there. It's a reminder, if nothing else, that something _went before_; otherwise, he might one day fall to believing that he and Sherlock are, and have always been, the only human beings on earth, that nothing has ever been different. Remembering things is important. It will always be important.

The rain gets heavier, and the windscreen wipers turn on automatically, lashing back and forth to create a smooth, clear semicircle. Muddy, frothing water sprays from the car wheels on either side as they roar through a deep puddle.

"Where are we going, then?" John says after a while.

Sherlock sighs again, exasperated. John is quickly eating up his quota of patience for the day, and the quota is never high. Not these days, anyway. "I've no idea," he says. "I thought you knew."

"I'm not the one driving, am I?" Sherlock's never said anything, but John can tell he prefers to have something to distract him, and at least driving is better than just staring out of the window. John is arguably a more competent driver, but the arrangement works a lot better than taking turns. They're both accustomed to it by now.

"You've got the map," Sherlock points out. "Do you even know where we are?"

"Um…" John opens it hurriedly, and flicks through, scanning the pages. It's incomprehensible to him – a mess of criss-crossing roads, patches of green, cryptic symbols and writing far too tiny to make out. He hazards a guess. "Wales?"

_"Wales?" _Sherlock stamps down on the brakes, screeching the car to a stop at the side of the road. John winces at the jarring halt. "How did we get to Wales? We just went past Wiltshire!"

"What? Wiltshire was ages ago. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry, I was looking at the wrong page. Yeah, we're not in Wales."

"Well, where are we, then?"

"Haven't a clue," says John.

Sherlock sighs, and places his head in his hands, elbows resting on the steering wheel. Long fingers twine into the dark half-moon curls, as if searching for something, anything to cling on to in a world that's slipping out of control. The car's engine growls softly, like a captive beast. "In future," he says, "do remind me always to rely on your navigating expertise, John."

Ignoring this, John opens the map fully, squinting at the tangled information that meanders across the page, telling him nothing he doesn't already know. His hand hovers over the sprawl of buildings and fields and roads and rivers (deserted now, all deserted) then his finger comes down and stabs.

"Let's go there," he says.

Sherlock stalls the car, finally, then leans over John's shoulder and looks. "Where?"

"There."

Sherlock peers closer, and chokes slightly in disbelief. "The _Golden Sands Holiday Resort?"_

"That's the one."

"No," says Sherlock. That one syllable holds resonances beyond finality.

"But – "

"No."

Sherlock starts the car again, and swerves out into the little country lane, flooring the accelerator. John eyes the speedometer, which is creeping ominously closer towards the hundred-mile-an-hour mark, and opens his mouth to tell Sherlock to slow down because he'll hit somebody. Then he closes it again.

There are no somebodies. All of them are gone. No one is left to hold up umbrellas, to protect their coats from getting splashed by the mud, to wear nice suits and go to work at nine o'clock in the morning. The work is gone, too. The buildings are still there, though. And the vans and cars and lorries. All empty, the tube trains stuck in tunnels like rats that died sudden deaths while still underground. Nobody ever mourns a dead rat rotting in a tunnel. Nobody knows it's there. Now, there is nobody left to know.

"We _could_ go there," he says at last, a little lamely, in an attempt to distract himself. "You know. If we wanted."

"Perhaps, but you've overlooked one thing," Sherlock says.

"What's that, then?"

"We can't go there, because we don't know where it is. And we don't know where we are, either. Do try and keep up, John." The car screeches around a hairpin bend, and John closes his eyes to keep back the sudden onslaught of nausea. Behind his closed lids, the darkness spins.

"That's easy," he says, when he's sufficiently recovered, and confident that he can open his mouth without throwing up. "We just follow the signs to the motorway. All we have to do is get onto the M25, and we're set."

"Why?" says Sherlock. "What's the point?"

He's right, in a way. There is no point. There's not much point to anything, if it comes to that – no point in driving, no point in talking, no point in bloody existing at all.

But John refuses to think like that.

"I don't know," he says, honestly. "But we've got to go somewhere. Why not go there?"

So they go there.


	2. that make up a dull day

_two_

* * *

It's early afternoon by the time they arrive, and the rain is just beginning to cease, giving way to a sun golden and watery as egg yolk. Sherlock stops the car, and for a moment they just sit there, side by side, staring out at the view.

The sea is huge, and flat, and dull, and all-expansive, and it has no particular colour to speak of; but during that one moment, it's the most beautiful thing John has ever seen. He wants to wrap himself up in the sight. This is unbelievable. He's waxing lyrical over the seaside. What'll it be next, Ode to Joy and paintings of sunflowers?

"There's a guest house just over that hill," he tells Sherlock, pointing vaguely. "We should head over there before we do anything else. Check that it's open."

"Of course it'll be _open,"_ says Sherlock scornfully.

"Well, we have to check, don't we? Come on."

They haul themselves out of the car, staggering slightly on legs weak from disuse, and John slings his rucksack over his shoulders. Neither of them have brought much with them – a change of clothes, a toothbrush, a couple of books. No phones, of course. What's the point, when there's nobody left to call? The only part of their past lives that remains with them is the laptop. John wondered about keeping his blog up, if only to stop himself falling into lethargy, but after some thought decided against it. Ironic, he says to himself now; a few years ago there was nothing to write about, and now there is, there's nobody to read it.

Slowly, they make their way up the grassy hillside, the ocean seething miles below them, a cold and endless grey plateau. It's bordered by a neat semicircle of sand, the fresh brassy gold of a newly-minted pound coin and punctuated by the occasional red-and-white striped umbrella. The scene is idyllic, straight out of a picture postcard. The only things missing are the shrieking children, the bikini-clad women sunning themselves and the blotchily tanned holidaymakers frolicking amidst the waves. Some people would consider their absence an improvement – Sherlock certainly would – but somehow, the beach isn't quite beachy enough (_is that a word? _John wonders vaguely) without them. It's like watching a film in an empty cinema, surrounded by dusty, abandoned seats. It just doesn't feel _right._

After several minutes, they reach the crest of the hill and arrive at a small village – a hamlet, really, with nothing of import aside from a few small cottages, a restaurant, a fish and chip shop named Crispy Cod, the generic plastic-beach-toys-and-ridiculously-expensive-ice-lollies store, and what is presumably the guesthouse. It's a smallish building; white sandstone, the front door flanked by two short pedestals, on each of which rests a basket of wilting pansies.

John opens the iron gate, which squeaks pathetically, and the two of them (that's him and Sherlock, not him and the gate) go cautiously up the front path. Why they're being cautious, he doesn't know. It just feels as if they should be.

Once there, Sherlock shoves at the front door with both hands, then jiggles the handle. The door stays obstinately shut.

"'Of course it'll be open,'" John mimics, simply because he cannot help himself.

Sherlock glares at him with such malice that the last unicorn, a litter of puppies, and a small child enjoying its first ice cream cone have all just simultaneously died. "Easily fixed," he says, and bends down to lift the basket of pansies off the stone pedestal. Then, grunting slightly with the effort, he pulls the pedestal itself free from the ground in which it is embedded. At first it remains where it is; but after a few seconds of tugging, it comes loose in a shower of damp earth and Sherlock bears it aloft, angling it with difficulty towards one of the neat lace-curtained windows.

"Er – Sherlock, what're you doing?" John questions, with a growing sense of foreboding.

"Obviously, I'm going to break the window," Sherlock replies calmly.

"Break the – _are you insane?"_

"That's one of those rhetorical questions, isn't it?"

"You're going to break the _window?"_

"I believe that is what I said," concedes Sherlock, and proceeds to do so.

John covers his ears instinctively against the sound of the impact, but even that doesn't block the crash that shatters the still afternoon like a gunshot. The glass doesn't immediately explode into dramatic fragments like in the movies; it merely spiderwebs into an intricate network of cracks, gleaming and impossibly thin, then collapses in on itself, showering the ground with crystals. The tinkling sound is silvery, like brittle laughter.

"Right," says Sherlock, dropping the pedestal onto the grassy verge with a thud. "Let's see what joys the Golden Sands Guesthouse has to offer us." He pushes out the last pieces of glass still clinging to the frame.

"Sherlock," says John, in the severest tone he is able to muster, "that is _breaking and entering!"_

"I haven't entered yet," Sherlock replies. He climbs up onto the ledge and stands for a moment, wobbling slightly, before ducking his head and disappearing under the window frame. "Oh! Now I have!"

Giving up, John sighs and follows him, albeit with rather less grace. Blinking in the sudden dim light, he waits for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and eventually makes out a small living room – very typically Olde English, with hideous flowered wallpaper, peat-coloured sofas and a television the size of a watermelon.

Light streams into the room as Sherlock yanks back the curtains, his slender figure silhouetted against the afternoon sun. John sets to work on the other windows. Before long, the entire room is fully illuminated. It's not an improvement.

"Interesting," Sherlock says.

"What's interesting?"

His friend turns to him, and John notices that his pupils are doing that strange flickering thing that happens whenever he's scanning something, analysing it, taking it down. It's good to see it again, however improbable. "It seems this guesthouse was never frequented, even…before," Sherlock explains, delicately edging around the topic neither of them want to discuss. "Difficult to tell, seeing as it's been abandoned for so long, but it seems there were only one or two visitors – both of them residents. Hardly surprising the place is so antiquate – anyone who chose to stay here for this length of time would have naturally become rather set in their ways." He moves swiftly to the low, peeling door. "Who say we investigate the state of the kitchen?"

Neither of them have eaten anything other than a packet of salt and vinegar crisps for the last eight hours, so John is eager to go along with this. He casts a quick glance back over his shoulder towards the dusty living room. As far as he can make out, it's just a living room. Shaking his head, he follows Sherlock out of the door.

The hallway is narrow, the ceiling hung with dusty chandeliers. Once they've opened all the doors and turned on all the lights – none of which actually work – they find that the four rooms leading off it consist of a dining room, another living room (this one more formal, but similarly outdated), a games room and, thank Christ, a kitchen.

John dives in before Sherlock and eagerly pulls open the door of the defunct fridge. Its contents, however, are something of a disappointment. After he's thrown out the meat and the liquid lettuce leaves, and poured the bottles of rancid milk down the sink, the only items he can salvage are a couple of tins of baked beans, some macaroni, and – bizarrely – a bag of Moon's Marshmallows. The freezer is in a similar state.

"What exactly were you hoping to find?" asks Sherlock dryly, from behind him.

"Food, ideally," John says. "But there isn't any. Only to be expected after this long, I suppose. Shall we check out the room situation?" Something inside him, a small rebellious voice, longs to dispose of this small talk; to return to the easy banter they previously indulged in, to dislodge the choking weight of everything they've left unsaid. But he doesn't quite dare, and he doesn't know what would happen if he did.

They find two rooms (if there'd been a number 221, John wouldn't have minded going for that, but there isn't; in fact, the rooms aren't even numbered, so they settle for two interconnecting ones on the second floor that are marginally less neglected than the others), and John begins to unpack his stuff. It doesn't take long before he's done, and faced with a more immediate problem. Several, in fact.

John raps his knuckles sharply on the interconnecting door. There's no response, so he opens it anyway and is greeted by the sight of a prone Sherlock sprawled out dramatically across one of the twin beds like some nineteenth-century heroine, eyes closed and face mostly embedded in the pillow. John's pretty sure he's not asleep, but he's also pretty sure that he won't be moving anytime soon.

The bay window overlooking the beaches is open several inches, rattling in the wind. John tries to close it and fails. It's jammed. He makes a mental note to have at it with a hammer later on.

"I'm going down to the village to see if any of the houses are stocked up," he tells the horizontal figure. "We need to find food, supplies, all the rest of it. Otherwise we're no better off than we were in London. You coming?"

Sherlock makes a vaguely negative sound, although he still does not deign to open his eyes.

"Right, then," says John, and off he goes.


	3. we fritter and waste the hours

A/N: Ah, my run-on sentences, I love you so. Still don't own, reviews are love, thou knowest the drill.

* * *

_three_

* * *

The resort is deserted. Utterly.

Of course it is, John reminds himself; this isn't one of those thriller movies where a genetic mutation oozes out of a dustbin to dramatic piano chords, or a troop of heroic survivors step forward from the shadows armed with AK47's. At one point, he's convinced that there's someone behind him, and spins round sharply a couple of times in the hope of surprising them, but there's no one there and all he hears is the sound of his own breathing, his own footsteps.

It seems he's getting paranoid. A bit not good, then.

The cottages are all locked, and John doesn't feel quite right about breaking into them; not that it would be much use, anyway. He fills the carrier bag he brought with everything non-perishable he can find in the restaurant, dried things and tinned things, and in the Crispy Cod, he throws away the mouldering chips and grabs a few bottles of sauce (the state of the fish is something he does not particularly want to examine). After that, he goes into the tourist shop, which is still open and liberally stocked with everything from garish T-shirts to buckets and spades in bright primary colours. There's a vending machine by the counter, and he has a go at smashing the glass – first with his feet, then his fists, then with a stool, except all that happens is his hands hurt, and then his feet, and then his arm.

Finally, feeling ridiculous, he feeds a pound coin into the slot. To his astonishment, the machine comes to life and silently delivers him a packet of prawn cocktail crisps. He manages to get several Twixes, some carbonated drinks and an energy bar out of it before it makes a noise like a small electronic burp and ceases to function. It gives him a slightly spooky feeling, as if he's been communicating with a ghost.

When he gets back to the guesthouse, Sherlock still hasn't moved – at least, not visibly. John deposits his findings on one of the cabinets and stands over him, arms crossed.

"Well. What happens now, then?"

"Don't ask me," Sherlock says into the pillow. "You're the one who wanted to come here."

John spends the next hour trying to read the newest Ruth Rendell crime novel, but he can't concentrate and before long he closes his mind on the antics of Inspector Wexford and rolls on to his back, staring up at the blank, impassive ceiling above him. _I could really do with a Chinese takeaway just now_, he thinks to himself, right before he slips into unconsciousness.

* * *

The next morning, Sherlock still refuses to get up.

The signs are as clear as if someone had scrawled them across the wall in indelible marker pen: _it's those black moods again, _the words say, empty and stark and there's no getting away from them. John is at war with himself. In part, he's irritated, because you really do pick your moments, don't you, Sherlock, right when it's just us and every day there's a chance I'll walk back to find you with a needle sticking out of your arm (did he even bring the needles? John doesn't know, he doesn't want to know, all he can do is hope) and God knows what I'll do all by myself, because it's difficult enough with you lounging around and acting like an old-time damsel stricken by consumption...Then, on the opposite side of his brain, there's the guilt. The guilt is there because he knows that the Black Dog is one of the few things Sherlock can't control, and there's about as much point being annoyed about it as there is being annoyed about a rain shower at a picnic.

Mostly, though, he's just apprehensive.

Back home, it was easy – all you had to do was cover him with a blanket, feed him a steady supply of toast and tea and wait for the amassing dark clouds to clear. Here, it's not so simple. Not only is there no tea (apart from the tiny jar that John managed to retrieve from the kitchen, which tastes of nothing but gives off a peculiar and off-putting smell of unwashed socks), but there are no cases, and therefore no incentives to distract Sherlock and goad him into rising. Just the days stretching endlessly on before them, filled with nothing but emptiness. Life has become a blank calendar, the pages ripped off one by one like some 1970s cartoon.

They can't live on pasta and vending machine crap forever. In fact, they can't live on vending machine crap at all, because the machine is no longer responding, and he still can't figure out how to get it open. So that day John sets out to the thin, gleaming, white-slashed coil of river that cuts through the fields and runs down to the ocean, armed with a bucket and a net. The bucket has a smiley face on it. Already, it's a better companion than Sherlock, here at the end of the world. More helpful and definitely a lot more fun.

After walking for a while along a featureless muddy track, he comes to the stream, homing in on the sound of bubbling, rushing water. It's shallow and clear, frothed with white and edged by pale, smooth rocks, widening as it nears the sea. The sky overhead is a stormy watercolour. He's had enough of grey weather, winter weather, and silently asks the clouds to wait until he's finished before they unload their burden.

For over two hours straight he sits on a rock at the edge of the river, legs dangling in the freezing current, almost-salty water pulsing beneath his feet. It's bloody stupid, if he's honest. For starters, he has no idea how to go about this. Never been fishing in his life. Doesn't even know if this is the right _place _for fish. He saw an advertisement in the convenience store, a slip of paper pinned to a cork board, for fishing excursions, and he's pretty sure it was to this location, but by the time his toes have turned blue and numb he's still caught nothing except a few rocks and a chunk of seaweed. It smells of salt and rot, a little like the inside of the Crispy Cod.

In a fit of temper, he chucks the net into the grass. Then he starts feeling guilty, and fretting about animals getting caught in it, and goes to pick it up again. He's a fool to himself, really.

He's just heading up the front path again when he remembers the car. Dropping the net and discouragingly still-empty bucket on the doorstep, he goes off down the hill to have a look at it. However, when he tries to start it up, there is nothing but an inexplicable _ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk _sort of noise, which John has heard before and recognises, in this context, as fatal. However, he refuses to give up that easily.

After several minutes of pulling the clutch, depressing the accelerator, kicking the car, shoving the car, beating the car with a tree branch in a homage to "Fawlty Towers", and finally just swearing at the car, he is finally forced to accept that it has – what do people say nowadays? – "given up the ghost". He gives the mud-spattered paintwork one last punch, to relieve his feelings.

It makes his knuckles bleed. It doesn't make him feel any better.


	4. in an offhand way

_four_

* * *

"What've you been doing all of today, then?"

The question is really more of an attempt to make sure that his friend is still alive than in any expectation of a rational answer. Sherlock does not lift his head, but his reply is just distinct enough - and acerbic enough – to make out. "Really, John, what does it _look_ like I've been doing?"

"In all honesty, not much. Oh, wait – let me guess, you're going to tell me you've been out battling ninjas or shooting Arabian assassins or tango dancing with the Queen or something. What, is this whole swooning-fair-maiden thing really a cover-up for your daredevil double life? Am I supposed to have got that by the dirt under your nails or a cut made by some special mace only produced in Sharm el Sheikh? Is all this some kind of elaborate interrogation to test out my intellect?"

He waits. The response is more muffled this time, and John frowns. "Sorry?"

Sherlock frees his mouth from the pillow. "I said, I am in the depths of despair," he enunciates more clearly. "And sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, John. It doesn't suit you."

_You complete and utter bloody hypocrite, _John thinks, but doesn't say it. "Oh dear. Depths of despair. Really?"

"Well." Sherlock furrows his brow, and appears to reconsider. "Not the _absolute _depths, perhaps. But you can see them from here. If you squint."

The breeze from the open window that John never remembered to fix ruffles the drapes, raising goose bumps on his arms.

"Right. Well, I'll let you get on with that, then."

John picks up the bucket, making to leave the room. Behind him, he senses a feeling of fierce invisible struggle, which he only picks up because he knows Sherlock so well (probably better than he knows himself, if it comes to that), and he waits by the door for just a little longer than usual, giving him one last chance. The pressure seems to build inexorably, until Sherlock sighs and speaks again, his voice quieter now, insistent.

"I'm not in the mood to assist with anything right now, John," he says. "Just give me a few days, and I'll see what I can manage. Whatever needs doing…"

"There's only two of us right now," John insists, facing him head on. "I need you to lend a hand."

At that, Sherlock gives him a disdainful glance, slant-eyed and supercilious, like a Siamese cat. "Who says there _has_ to be two of us?"

There's a bit of a silence, then. A lot of a silence, if it comes to that. And this time it's definitely not a comfortable one. It hangs over them, dark and heavy as a shroud.

John is the first to break it. "So…what are you saying?" Even to his own ears, his voice sounds cold, but there's a devil in him now, and it won't let him stop talking even though he knows he should. A part of him wonders, distantly, what exactly the devil is trying to say, and why it feels the need to use his lips and tongue and teeth to do it. He carries on anyway. "Is it that you don't want me holding you back any more? You want to run off and find somewhere where you can be all on your own with your brilliant mind and live off dustbin scraps? Well, if you don't want to stay here, I can't force you. You want to leave? Be my guest. Go on."

Another of those silences. John can't tell whether Sherlock is seriously considering this proposal, or whether he's just shocked that John has dared to challenge him. In this kind of mood, either one is possible.

"Oh, fuck off, John," Sherlock says at last, the word sounding strangely obscene in the low, public-school voice, and he turns away again.

So John throws the bucket at his head.

"Jesus _Christ!"_

The bucket still contains a couple of inches of river-water, which is unleashed in a muddy torrent. The top half of Sherlock is instantly dripping wet, the stains on his shirt darkening to a soaked, see-through grey. His curls droop lankly down, one obscuring his right eye entirely like a black comma. The bucket clatters to the floor and lies, defeated, on its side.

"Get the fuck out of bed!" John shouts at him.

Sherlock gets the fuck out of bed, and stands there opposite John, his weight on one leg, looking rumpled and malevolent, but mostly just wet. "Aren't we supposed to be on _holiday?"_ he says, spitting some water out of his mouth.

"What the hell's _that _supposed to mean?"

"Well, I was always led to understand that holidays constitute lie-ins. However, if I was mistaken in this assumption, please do let me know."

"That doesn't mean you can just "lie in" day in, day out, and expect me to run around sorting everything out. I cannot indulge every single whim you have, all right? You're not a child and I'm through with treating you like one. Besides, there's stuff to _do_ here, you know!"

Sherlock shifts his weight, dragging a hand through his damp hair. It's seven o'clock in the evening – just gone, in fact – and the evening light sneaking through the crack in the curtains makes his face look even more gaunt than usual, illuminating the hollow angles that come from little food and practically no sleep either.

"What 'stuff'?" he asks, in a voice somehow both delicate and acidic.

And there John's caught. He flounders for a moment, opens his mouth, closes it again. There's really not much to say.

"I rest my case," Sherlock says, and moves to lie back down. But before he has a chance, John grabs hold of his wrists and shoves him against the wall, hard.

_"It's just you and me, Sherlock!"_

They both freeze. The words have been buzzing in John's head for days, like static, unrelenting in their starkness but still no cause for damage. Now that he's said them out loud, though, they seem to be buzzing around the room like angry hornets, stinging and stinging.

Sherlock doesn't say anything.

"It's just you and me," John repeats, more softly this time. "Listen. Don't you get it? _There is nobody else!_ No one's coming. No one will rescue you, no one will look after you. There's no one to deduce. There are no more serial killers. There are no more experiments. It's just you and me."

"John," says Sherlock, very coldly, "you're hurting me."

No. Not cold. Cold doesn't do that justice, and icy or wintry don't even come close. Numb, really, would be the best way to describe it. John lets go of the wrists. They drop to his sides and Sherlock rubs them cautiously, as if he's a prisoner, as if they've been handcuffed for a long time and the blood flow has begun to cease.

"Listen to me," John says again.

Sherlock gives him a _look._ (They're famous, Sherlock's looks, and John usually tends to just crumple beneath the force of their voltage. Not this time, though.) "Why should I?" he snaps.

It's true. There's no reason why anyone should listen to John. Not that many people ever did.

"I don't know," he says at last, only because he can't think of anything else to say. There isn't anything revelatory, nothing that would help this ridiculous, ugly situation they've found themselves in; nothing, in short, that would do any good whatsoever. He continues regardless. "But look, you might as well. 'Cause it's just us, Sherlock. Just us."

Again, Sherlock does not respond. A storm of mixed-up emotions, of rage and confusion and helplessness, John picks the bucket up off the floor and walks out through the bathroom, closing – but not quite slamming – the bedroom door behind him.

When he next peers in, a few hours later, Sherlock has returned to his original position, except this time his hands are clasped prayer-like under his chin, a monk deep in contemplation. John spots the violin case in the corner – the catches are undone, but the case itself is not open, which means either that Sherlock was playing while he was out, or that he opened the case, looked at the violin, then decided against it. In his current situation, the latter seems most likely.

John retreats, and lies down on his bed again.

He remembers the hovel of a room he inhabited when he first came to London, remembers the grey walls that seemed to press in on all sides and the lamp that flickered and buzzed like the striplights in a tube carriage. He remembers, most of all, the nothingness. The empty room, the empty screen that he should have been typing his life into day after day but contains only white space and a blinking cursor, and most of all the empty empty empty days stretching on before him like squares in a math textbook, waiting to be filled with numbers and digits and people. He did a lot of staring at the ceiling when he was in that room, too.

_Circular narrative, _he thinks, although he can't quite recall what it means.


	5. kicking around on a piece of old ground

Hey, y'all. Just wanted to say thanks for reading, and please do review - it makes my day, and this fic hasn't been getting much feedback in comparison to some of my other writings. Anyway, best wishes!

* * *

_five_

* * *

On Thursday – at least, John thinks it's Thursday, though he's never quite sure of the date any more, and his phone ran out of charge a long while ago – he finds the jeep.

It's rusting, battered, a hunk of metal skewed at an improbable angle in a field behind one of the cottages. It's been there so long that the grass and brambles and those long weedy things with the clinging tendrils (he can't remember what they're called, and he can't remember if he ever did, and he can't remember if he even cares) have begun to grow around it, crawling sinuously up over the bonnet and wrapping themselves around the battered tyres like over-affectionate lovers.

John's got nothing better to do, so he yanks open the car door – which resists at first, then finally gives way and bursts open, trailing weed – and peers inside. The key is still in the lock. There's a strange smell in there, a smell of the dank marsh, or of the earth, or the creeping undergrowth. Of wild and lonely places coming alive at night, when there is nobody around to see. The seats have begun to rot away. He clambers up into the driver's seat and just sits there for a moment, eyes shut, breathing in the smell.

It's like being buried alive.

He'd be lying if he said he'd had any expectations, or any intuition, or anything at all, really. He knows perfectly well that there wasn't a logical possibility that the car would be working. So when he reaches out and turns the key, just for the hell of it, the sudden growl and shudder takes him completely by surprise, and he almost falls out of the car.

Jeeps. He loves jeeps. He has never said a word against jeeps. Clicking the key back to its original position and silencing the engine's hum, he leans back against the seat again and exhales, long and quiet. A woodlouse makes its way over the dashboard.

After a few minutes, he exits the car again, stepping down into the knee-length grass. Instinct makes him want to to bring the keys with him, but there isn't much point, really, so he leaves them on the seat and covers them with some stuffing, hoping they won't get stolen by rabbits or anything.

He shoves open the door to Sherlock's room without bothering to knock. "Hey, listen, didn't want to disturb you but I've found something. It…" Then he pulls up sharply.

Sherlock is lying flat on the floor, arms crossed on his chest like a parody of a corpse. His face is white and translucent as wax, chiselled-looking, eyes loosely closed. The veins on his eyelids make the skin look as blue as the flame on a Bunsen burner, which is kind of a strange analogy, but that's the first thing that comes to mind, and it's not like that matters anyway, it's not like any of it matters, because his former flatmate (shit that, his _friend)_ is lying on the floor and he's not moving.

"Sherlock!" He crosses the room in two strides and drops to his knees, his stomach lurching uncomfortably. "Sherlock, wake up. Seriously, don't do this to me now. Wake up!"

He's breathing so fast he doesn't even notice those pale eyes flicker open, doesn't see the still face twitch, until he feels the hand grip on to his sleeve.

"I'm awake, John," Sherlock says quietly.

The world seems to shimmer, to stretch. John sinks down, in an awkward kind of sprawl, and feels himself go a little weak around the edges. The words leave his mouth in a blurred rush. "Fuck, don't do that _ever again. _I thought…" The panic is starting to die down, leaving him feeling slightly ridiculous again.

"I know what you thought." Sherlock lifts his head, resting it on his hands. "What did you find?"

"It's a car." John is still breathing a little faster than normal, but his heart rate is beginning to slow. Thank God for small mercies. "I found a car, and it's working. We can get out of here when we want to."

"That's good," says Sherlock. And then he doesn't say anything else.

"Well…" John flounders. "Do you want to come and have a look at it?"

"Not particularly."

"I'll take that as a no, then."

"I'm all right here, thanks." Sherlock's voice is taking on a tinge of impatience.

"You haven't changed out of those pyjamas in six days. And...you're lying on the floor."

He cracks open one eye. "Yes, we've established that. Any other penetrating insights you'd like to voice while we're at it?"

"You'd prefer a question? OK, _why _are you lying on the floor?"

"Why not?" Sherlock asks, in his usual way of not quite answering the question, or answering it with another question, or just avoiding it altogether.

"Well, maybe because there's a bed right next to you?"

"Beds are overrated."

"Don't you want to leave? I thought you hated it here."

"It's the same everywhere." Sherlock is rising unsteadily to his feet at long last, a morose expression on his face. "Don't you see? There is nothing. No one. Anywhere. Tell me, John, what precisely is the _point?"_

He's sounding uncannily like a posh version of those emo heavy-metal bands Harry used to listen to in her teens, full of screaming guitars and singers with heavy black eyeliner. John sighs, irritation moving a notch up the scale, closer towards anger. "For God's sake, just get out of this room for once!"

"Why should I?" Sherlock's voice is just as loud as his own.

"Oh, why don't you fucking _do something!" _John shouts at him.

Sherlock does something. He hits John in the face.

There's a crunching sound like a Range Rover impacting with a hedgehog, and a sensation like brain freeze, except centered on John's nose rather than his skull. The numbness is so intense that for a few seconds he doesn't even notice the blood, until it starts dripping over his top lip and into his mouth. It tastes of rusted iron.

"Ow," says John, not so much because it hurts, but because he feels as if he should.

Sherlock waves his hand abstractedly around, as if he's trying to shake the pain out of it. John's nose was obviously much harder than he'd expected. "Ow," he agrees.

Then they look at each other, face to face, without blinking, for what must be about thirty seconds. It's one of those moments which would make a wonderful film shot, but in real life just feels stilted and awkward. They're very close, suddenly. John doesn't know how that happened. The air feels oddly charged, as though a lightning storm is passing overhead.

John almost speaks, but ends up closing his mouth to trap the words inside. Any speech, he knows almost intrinsically, would break the fragile balance hovering between them. It's strange, but he feels as though the two of them are on a precipice – high up and clinging on for dear life, the slightest misstep threatening to send them into an abyss. They are frozen, paralysed, and anything could happen right now, anything at all. A bomb could go off. Someone could knock at the door. John could hit Sherlock back, harder. Or he could do something else.

Just as the pressure reaches tipping point, Sherlock moves backwards suddenly.

"Wait," he says.

"What?"

"Your nose," Sherlock says, "is bleeding."

"I'm aware."

Feeling unusually hollow, John goes sideways into the bathroom they share, and tears off a roll of toilet paper. Sherlock follows him in and watches him as he methodically soaks up the blood, finishing off by stuffing two walrus tusks of tissue into his nostrils. When he's done, he turns round and asks (slightly nasally), "What was that for, then?"

"Not sure," admits Sherlock. He looks as if he might add something – perhaps a, "Sorry" – but doesn't.

And yes, John's angry, because contrary to popular belief, he does get angry sometimes, just like most other human beings on this godforsaken planet. He's angry, and to be honest he wouldn't mind punching Sherlock back, but that wouldn't do much good. Anger never really solves anything. He nods and says, "Right," and flushes away the crimson-stained tissues.

"What kind?" Sherlock says abruptly, as John's leaving the room.

"Sorry?"

"What kind of car is it?"

"It's a Jeep," John tells him. "A blue one."

"Ah."

John closes the door behind him.

"That went well," he says to nobody in particular.


	6. in our hometown

A/N: I've decided I'm going to update every other week instead - once a week is too strenous. This chapter was longer than the others, and I had an unusual amount of homework. So sorry about that. :) Keep reading, and I hope people are enjoying this little brain-vomit of mine. Catch...you...later.

_...(No you won't!)_

* * *

_six_

* * *

When the next night comes, it's cold.

It's not actually Thursday night. It's a few days later than that, but John's not counting the past few because he's spent them sitting up, hour after hour, in the glow of the candles he obtained from the breakfast room, powering through the few remaining novels he brought – and no, he's not been reading Fifty Shades of Grey, no matter what Sherlock might try to insinuate – or tossing and turning, or staring out of the window, or wandering the empty guesthouse like a lonely, shadowy phantom in striped pyjamas. That's what lack of exercise does to you. At one point he even got out his laptop, though God knew what he thought he was going to write on it, but as soon as he'd turned it on it had bleeped, showed him the picture of an empty battery and switched itself off again.

Right now, though, the only thing he can do is huddle beneath the bedcovers and clench his teeth to stop them chattering. When he slides out of bed, just to have one last look out of the window, it's as though an iron fist has clenched on his entire body. The lack of central heating has never seemed so cruelly apparent. Spreading one hand on the windowpane, he feels the chill of it seeping through his skin, like ice in his veins. When he takes the hand away, it leaves a pale imprint, like a sort of ghost of itself.

He crawls back into bed and pulls the sheets over his head, clenching his fists tight to try and banish the numbness. He's tired, more tired than he can recall being for a long time, but it's already pretty obvious that sleep's not going to present itself to him tonight. Already, two sweaters are layered over his pyjamas, but it's not making much of a difference.

Somewhere in the dangerous, smoggy, frozen world beyond the sanctuary of the bedclothes, there's a low creaking noise. At first he ignores it, body too paralysed to investigate, but then he hears the sound of the door scraping across the carpet and sits up suddenly, sheets gathered around his head like a towel turban. He claws them free of his eyes and makes out a dark, distinct shape in the doorway that leads out on to the corridor.

Relieved, he opens his mouth to ask Sherlock what he's doing here, then closes it again as his voice dies in his throat. This figure is the wrong shape for Sherlock. It's much thinner and taller, almost spindly, like a shadow thrown out across a wall by a candle flame.

"Sherlock?" he says, softly, but there's no certainty in his voice now. Their rooms are interconnected – there wouldn't be any point in the detective entering from the hallway, especially considering his low regard for privacy. John knows now that whoever this is, it isn't Sherlock.

The figure comes closer. John moves back slightly, struggling to make out any features on it, but the gloom is too complete. He lets out a slow, forcibly calm exhalation, and sees his breath appear in smoke before him, fogging the air with a misted white cloud. It's coming closer to him now – it? why is he thinking of the shape as an "it", it's a person, it's got to be a person – and it's not reaching out its hands or hissing or anything that monsters do in hammy horror films, it's just walking towards him very slowly and leisurely, and this is nothing supernatural, this is a person, this is a shadow, this is his imagination, this is –

Then the interconnecting door half-opens, and a warm golden radiance floods the room.

For a brief, ridiculous moment, John imagines that what's happening is something supernatural after all. That this is Death approaching him, and the glow creeping into the light-starved corners of his bedroom is something angelic, something ethereal, and any moment now will be accompanied by harps and trumpets. Then the door opens all the way, and it's not an angel. It's just Sherlock, maddening, glorious Sherlock, in a dark blue dressing gown with a candle held aloft.

"You're still awake," he observes. John should be surprised – it's not like him to state the obvious – but his mind is occupied with other things. He stares at the door opening on to the hallway. It's open, but there is nothing beyond it, and the room is empty.

"Check the hallway," he orders tensely, the words coming out clipped and harsh. "Check it. Now."

Sherlock brushes his gaze over John's face. "Something's upset you," he notes in a low voice. "What happened?"

"Never mind what happened," John says between chattering teeth. "Just look. Please. For my sake."

Giving him an expression halfway between sceptical and worried – or at least, what passes for worried where Sherlock is concerned – he steps out into the dark hallway, holding the flickering candle first to the left, then to the right.

"Nothing," he calls from outside. "There's nothing here. Is that how it should be?"

"I don't know." John lets out a bizarre little half-laugh, distorted by cold and confusion and yes, all right, _fear. _Damn it_. _"I honestly don't know."

Sherlock comes back into the room, slamming the door shut. "You saw something," he says, flatly. It isn't a question. "Or someone."

John shakes his head. "I don't know what I saw."

"Yes, but you did see something. Whether or not you can identify the evidence of your eyes and coherently articulate it is irrelevant. Describe it to me. Exactly as you saw it."

"I can't. I mean. It – it wasn't really anything."

Sherlock sighs impatiently, in a way that suggests they have been through this many times before, and places the candle down on the bedside table with a clunk. "So you saw something, but it wasn't really anything. Crystal clear as ever, John. Thank you for that account."

"Yes, all right, I'll tell you. Give me a chance!"

Sherlock waits, and after a moment, John decides he's gathered himself enough to sound reasonably lucid. "It was a person," he says. "At first I thought it was you, but it was taller. And it didn't say anything. Just opened the door and came in, walked towards me. Slowly."

"You're sure this really happened?"

John glares at him. "It wasn't a nightmare, if that's what you mean." He has nightmares, of course – doesn't everybody? – but not like that. His nightmares are of guns and soldiers, of blood and burning suns and parched desert earth, and after they met Moriarty, of drowning. Drowning in deep, dark, icy water, that stole his breath when he tried to call out Sherlock's name.

"All right, so, not a nightmare. Go on. What did it look like?"

John complies, not just because he wants the whole thing out there as a kind of proof that he's not mad, but because he can tell that Sherlock is_ loving_ this. It's the first time he's had a chance to think properly in weeks, the closest thing he's had to a case, and John can practically hear the cogs and the engines beginning to whirr.

"It didn't really look like anything," he admits. Seeing Sherlock open his mouth, he holds up a finger in warning. "Wait. Hear me out. It was dark, I couldn't see the face properly. Just the silhouette. Anyway, so it came in, it was standing over me, and then just as it was about to – shit, I don't even know what it was about to do – you came in. And then it was gone. I mean, it left."

"It," Sherlock says. _"It._ Why do you keep saying 'it'?"

"What else am I supposed to say?"

"The first thing you said is that it was a person. If it was a person, if it had had features and clothes and all the rest of it, you'd have said he or she, more likely he. But you can't say what it looked like, you haven't even stated that it appeared human, and you're using the word "it" that indicates you don't think it is. You just said "person" so I wouldn't dismiss your story out of hand due to my solid and unwavering cynicism regarding the supernatural. You also initially said, "it was gone" rather than "it left", implying that your first impression was that it had simply vanished upon my arrival rather than departing the room in the normal way, although you immediately tried to convince yourself that your mind was playing tricks on you, hence your insistence that I check the hallway. Not to mention the fact that I myself didn't see anything when I came in, and yet your emotional state is all too apparent."

John waits for a couple of seconds, to make sure he's quite finished, then nods. "You're right. I don't know what it was, but I don't think it was human. Because there aren't any humans left, apart from us, and there was something – I don't know. About the way it moved. No, that wasn't it…" He frowns, trying to remember, but already the image is beginning to fragment.

"You're forgetting already, aren't you?" Sherlock says.

"I'm not. I'm not. Listen, Sherlock, it wasn't a dream, all right? I don't just think stuff up like that, I'm not that imaginative. I was awake when you came into the room – I remember you opening the door! How could I have been awake and asleep at the same time?"

"At Baskerville," Sherlock says, his words carefully measured and cautious, "in the lab. Remember how you thought you saw that dog – "

"I didn't see it. I heard it, and that was only because you were using a microphone to project the sound of a dog into the room!" John can't siphon away the layer of bitterness infusing his words. He's never quite forgiven Sherlock for that.

"You were still afraid."

"Of course I bloody was! You made me think I was trapped in a locked room with an enormous, bloodthirsty, genetically mutated monster in there with me. What was I supposed to do? Besides, you thought you saw it too."

"I was drugged. There's a difference. I think that just now, you were cold, and it was dark, and you were afraid, and it's perfectly understandable – "

"Sherlock, _I know what I saw."_

Sherlock pauses for a moment, pressing his lips together tightly. John winds his fingers into the sheets, twists them around his hands, cutting off what little there is left of his circulation.

"Why did you come in here?" John says softly, at long last.

"My window was broken."

John remembers the open window, and wants to punch himself for not fixing it, except that Sherlock's already dealt with that himself quite firmly, thank you. (It still hurts whenever he sneezes.) If it's cold in this room, he can't even begin to imagine what it must be like in Sherlock's. If the man wasn't so bloody stubborn, he would have come here earlier, but he is, and so he didn't. John imagines walking in the next morning and finding him frozen to the floor, face blue-tinged like a Titanic victim, and is torn between a laugh and a shudder.

"John," Sherlock says, breaking into his thoughts, "you must understand…it's not that I disbelieve you. I believe that you saw, or thought you saw, something. Maybe it was a shadow, or a projection from the window. Maybe it was your subconscious, I don't know. But it wasn't a monster." Sherlock lifts his gaze to meet John's, his eyes full of calm surety. "Real monsters don't exist, apart from the ones in our minds. Things like that don't happen. Not in real life."

"What happened to everyone else, then?" John flashes back. "Where did they go? Because you know, they didn't just get wiped out by some biological weapon, Sherlock. They weren't massacred in the Third World War. They weren't swallowed by a tsunami. They just…" He searches for the right wording. "They just weren't here any more," he finishes, voice slightly weak around the lump forming in his throat.

And for the second time, he's broken the law. The unwritten, unspoken law that hangs between the two of them constantly, an upraised and flaming sword. First rule of the end of the world: you don't talk about people. Second rule of the end of the world: you don't talk about people. Because in the end, there really is nothing left for them here, and silence is the only value they have in this darkened, damaged world of ghosts.

In the quiet that follows, he can hear Sherlock's teeth chattering.


	7. waiting for someone or something

A/N: I apologise if this chapter is late/too short/rubbish. I've put cuddling in to make up for it. Enjoy.

* * *

_seven_

* * *

"Shit," John says. He forces shaky legs out of bed and wobbles to his feet, stumbling like a newborn giraffe. _"Shit, _you're just wearing pyjamas, you must be absolutely freezing, I'm sorry, I didn't think – "

"I'm fine," Sherlock says curtly. There is an appropriately cool look in his eye that says _Go no further with this. All I will do is glare at you. _However, John takes no notice of it. He's seen it before, and he knows how to beat it down.

"Get in that bed," he tells him, not even caring how it might sound. "Now. Doctor's orders."

"And what about your good self, Doctor?"

John puffs himself up, in a way that he hopes looks manly and self-sacrificing. "I'll take the floor."

"Don't be ridiculous, that way you'll freeze to death as well. You must see it's a completely illogical arrangement."

"It's a sacrifice that I'm prepared to make. Besides, you're skinnier, logic stands you'll get cold faster."

Sherlock folds his arms, leaning against the cupboard. "I am not _skinny," _he argues, looking wounded.

"Yeah, you are."

"It's sinew."

"If you say." John has a sudden brainwave. "Want to borrow one of my jumpers?"

Sherlock snorts. "I'm not that desperate."

John picks up the pillow and hurls it at him. It's a satisfyingly direct hit to the chest.

"Hmm, domestic violence," says Sherlock, having inspected the cushion for clues. "I underestimated you, clearly."

"Clearly. Get under the covers."

"No."

"Do it."

An eyebrow raise. "Make me."

Despite his resolution not to read into their interactions the way he would with other people – after all, it's not like either of them would work together, what with John being pretty much heterosexual and Sherlock being, well, _Sherlock – _the connotations of those last two words would have set him to flushing, if it wasn't so bloody _cold._ He considers, for a few minutes, about how to solve the dilemma of trying to coax his stubborn friend under the covers to stop him from freezing to death, and eventually surfaces with a solution. It's not perfect, but it'll have to do.

"Both of us," he says.

Sherlock looks confused. The expression is wrong for his face; it looks as though it's been grafted on, someone else's expression occupying the normally detached, superior visage. It's a refreshing sight. "What?"

"Both of us," John repeats. "All the briefings on hypothermia say to share body heat. It's the only thing that really works, apparently. And besides, it's ridiculous letting one of us occupy the floor when the bed's big enough for two." He steers a confused Sherlock over to the bed by the shoulders and pushes him down on to it, not forcefully, but insistently.

"This is not going to work," says Sherlock.

John goes round to the other side of the bed and flops down next to him. "Oh, just shut up and lie down," he tells him, shutting his eyes.

"I've noted that you become inordinately aggressive when concerned for my welfare," Sherlock observes uncomfortably, as John pulls the covers up to his chest. "It can't be healthy."

"Yeah, well. You're my best mate, I'm not gonna sit back and watch the frost form on your skin." One of Sherlock's feet brushes against his calf, and he almost shrieks. _"Je_-sus! What the hell was that?"

"It was a foot."

"That's no foot. No living organism is that cold. It must be, I don't know, maybe an escaped penguin that's decided to crawl in with us or something like that. An animated icicle. A zombified limb."

"You're being utterly ridiculous," Sherlock says with a sigh, and huddles down, one arm over his face, the other flung out over the pillow. "Go to sleep."

"All right," agrees John complacently. "By the way, do you snore?"

"Never having heard myself sleeping, I can't really say. That's my arm, John, not a pillow. Just so you know."

"Works just as well for neck support."

John wonders if it's possible for an eye-roll to be audible.

For a long while, they don't speak at all. The bed, which was initially the equivalent temperature to the inside of a freezer, is beginning to thaw from their combined body heat, and the sheets encase them like sinking into a hot bath, or sitting in front of a blazing fire. John remembers, in the back of his mind, a long-ago Christmas, when it actually snowed (something he thought only happened in cards and stories) and they'd had a fire going in the grate, and right then it had seemed like the most exciting thing in the world. He'd run out into the snow in pyjamas and bare feet, just to watch the damp blue smoke curl upwards into the sky, standing wide-eyed and surrounded by white flakes, like some soft-focus Disney child. Later on, they'd all sat and watched ancient films and felt the firelight dance across their faces. John figures it probably wasn't like that, not like he remembers it. Harry would've grumbled and moaned and said that the films were cheesy and unrealistic – which, in fact, they were – and his mother would have fussed and fretted and his father would have wanted to watch the sports, because that's how things are in real life. Dimly, John thinks that it's kind of a pity that memories never seem to live up to the real thing. Must be one of those laws of nature.

"Is this normal?" John asks finally. The shivers have abated at last, and weariness is beginning to set in, stealing through his limbs and weighing him down. His mind is beginning to slow, too; the processes slide together, individual thoughts entangling until there's just a collage of words and shapes and images. At first he doesn't realise he's spoken aloud, and then he hears his own voice in the darkened room and feels obliged to elaborate. "I mean, are _we _normal? Do normal friends do this sort of thing?"

"John," says Sherlock, his voice low and muzzy with sleep, but for once, not irritated, "since when has anything about us _ever_ been normal?"

Fair point, thinks John, and he almost says it, but the thought slips away from him. Like a tree losing its leaves one by one, he's forgotten even the thing he was thinking. The rest of his mind blows away, piece by piece, scattering itself into sleep.

Then there is just quiet and the wind outside and soft, rhythmic breaths, and the two of them lie curled together, blankets drawn tightly over them, waiting for the dawn.


	8. to show us the way

I honestly cannot recall how long it has been since I last updated this, but if it was longer than two weeks, I'm really sorry. Things have been...messy. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and that you haven't left and given up. :)

* * *

_eight_

* * *

John wakes to the sound of crashing water.

The sound invades his senses, permeating his ears insistently and relentlessly, but it's a while before he connects the static-like hiss to the world outside his half-awake dreams. Sitting up carefully, he cricks his neck, stretches his cramped arms, and looks around. The room is bathed in daylight, turned a cold blue through the window's frost, and the other side of the bed is empty.

Having located the sound of the water – it's issuing, as he would have expected, from behind the bathroom door, and is presumably the shower, unless there's been a terrible leak in the middle of the night – he slips on a pair of trainers and goes out into the hallway, closing the bedroom door behind him. It's eerily quiet. There are no footprints on the carpet, and the ugly wallpaper print, peeling away in some places and stained yellow in others, offers him no questions and no answers.

They found the front door keys not long after they arrived here, and took care to lock the door every night; and John boarded up the shattered window days ago, to stop animals and insects and rain from entering the house. The door is still locked. The window is still boarded. He walks around each of the downstairs rooms one by one, but each is deserted. There's no sign of any break-in.

Once he's dressed and washed, he knocks on Sherlock's door, half-expecting him not to reply. However, a few seconds after the knock, there's a call out for him to come in, and he enters to see Sherlock towelling off, still half-clothed and shivering slightly. John feels himself shudder in sympathy; the chill of last night still lingers, although it's considerably more bearable than it was at 3am in the morning.

"Well, nothing's been damaged," John says. He leans against the doorframe, arms folded. "Door's locked, just like it was when we arrived. No sign of a break-in. What does that leave us with?"

Sherlock is pulling on his shirt, his back to John. "It leaves us with options," he says, without turning round. "Four of them, if my assumptions are correct."

"OK. Hit me with it."

"Please don't ever use that phrase in my presence again, John."

"Right. Sorry." He moves further into the room, seats himself on the edge of the bed. "What are you thinking at the moment, then?"

"Option number one," Sherlock says, facing him at last, "is that you imagined it all. Dreamt it. Fantasized it. Hallucinations and mental confusion, however you might try to deny it, are a medically proven result of hypothermia, although I wouldn't have thought yours was far advanced enough for that. If I was a psychiatrist, I'd say it was some kind of projection, a subconscious fear taking on a physical form…"

"Oh, stop that. You're starting to sound like Ella."

Sherlock sits down next to him, looking something between curious and disapproving. "Girlfriend?"

"Nope. My therapist, remember?"

"Ah, yes." Sherlock nods in comprehension. "The one whose notes you tried to read upside-down. Can't think why – it wasn't as though she ever wrote anything of particular importance. Why do you care what she thinks anyway?"

"Let's get back to our nighttime visitor," John suggests. "Oh, and I didn't dream it, by the way. Do you seriously think I did?"

"Well, I'm listing this in order of probability. And yes, at at the moment, that's the most logical option. You see, unless the intruder in question was exceptionally mistrustful or even malevolent, he would have tried to approach other humans for survival and company. Nobody wants to think that they're the only one. The fact that he's not come into contact before now suggests that his image is something that your own mind has conjured up, either as reassurance or as a result of fear. But you know what I've always said – when you've eliminated all other possibilities, whatever remains –"

" – however improbable, must be the truth. Yeah, I know," John interrupts. "Keep going. What are the other options?"

"Option number two is that he was in the house already. Either he was here when we arrived, or he followed us in before you had a chance to board up the window. Likelihood is that he was hiding in one of the other hotel rooms, but that's illogical – how would he get sustenance, unless he stole it from our supplies? But he couldn't have done, we'd have noticed if he had. Or _I_ would, anyway." John opens his mouth to protest, but Sherlock waves him down. "If this theory's correct, either he has a secret hoard somewhere or he's very, very hungry, which would certainly explain why he entered your bedroom – he might have been looking for something. Though if he's been here that long, he would have known that the food's kept in _my _room, not yours. So he's either exceptionally stupid, hardly a common phenomenon in my experience, or he's arrived recently. In the course of things, possible, probable even, but still unlikely. The evidence is shaky as well, there are no visible signs of any other human beings in this area, aside from ourselves."

John's pretty sure Sherlock didn't mean that last sentence to sound as creepy as it did.

"Third option?" he asks, trying to keep his voice under control.

"Again, this one's flawed, but the intruder could have entered another way. Are there any secret entrances I don't know about?"

"If there are, I haven't seen any."

Sherlock frowns. "All right. I suppose we can rule that one out. I'll have a look round later, see if there's anything you missed." For a moment he remains still, staring into space, then with a movement so abrupt it makes John flinch, he jumps to his feet and strides over to the other side of the room. After taking his coat from the back of the door and pulling it on, he turns to John. "Where's my scarf?"

"I didn't think you brought it," John answers, slightly befuddled.

"No, you're right, I didn't. Damn. Have to do without it for once." He buttons the coat and steps out onto the landing. "Are you coming or not?"

"Coming where?"

"To check out this jeep of yours, of course. Or was that another figment of your imagination?"

John ignores the jibe, hurrying after him. "Wait! Sherlock!"

"What?" Sherlock snaps.

John catches him up at the top of the stairs. "You never told me the fourth option."

A raised eyebrow. "Correct."

"Well…what is it, then?"

"Forget about the fourth option," Sherlock says as they start to descend. "There is no fourth option. It seems I wasn't thinking clearly."

"Not thinking clearly?" John laughs in disbelief. "You? You've got to be kidding me."

Sherlock produces the front door keys from the pocket of his coat and unlocks the door. A gust of icy wind spirals in through the gap, making the curling envelopes that they haven't bothered to throw out yet slip from the hall table, skittering across the floor like fallen leaves. The doorstep is slippery with frost. "We haven't even asked ourselves the most important question," he says. "Yes, we've discussed how he managed to get in, and what he might have wanted, but let's be frank with each other – that's the least of the problem, isn't it?"

"Let's not get to that just yet." John pulls his cardigan down further, pressing his lips together. "My mind's been fucked with enough as it is."

Sherlock nods, slowly, without really looking at him, and John's held by his eyes, wolf-grey in this early light.

* * *

When they reach the jeep, the first thing Sherlock does is fling open the driver's door and scramble in, running his hands over the dashboard. "Fantastic," he says. "This, _this _is a real find. Any idea how much petrol it's got in it? How long it'll run for?"

"Haven't a clue, sorry. So long as we can get it out of the field, we should be OK." John follows him up, seating himself on the other side of the car, keeping his feet up off the floor for fear of what might crawl over them.

"I'd better just give it a test run." Sherlock runs an eye over the interior, and pulls a face. "There's no key. John, don't tell me you've left the key behind."

"What? It should be here. Oh, hang on, I'm sitting on it."

Sherlock gives John a slightly contemptuous look as he stands awkwardly, feeling around on the passenger seat. He sifts through mould, stuffing, bits of lint and grass, and finally shakes his head. "It's not here."

"What did you do with it? Think, John! If you've lost the key all this is for nothing. Did you put it in your pocket? Hide it somewhere?"

"I left it on the seat," John says. He shakes his head, confused. "It should still be here. But it's not."

"Oh, for God's sake." Sherlock leans over. "Let me look. I bet I'll find it."

Just as he's leaning over to check, he makes a noise. It's a noise that sounds like it's trying to be a warning, and which may have started out life as a gasp, but was intercepted halfway through and choked into deathly silence. John starts to ask if he is all right, but then there is a coldness on the back of his neck, a numbness, the prick of steel.

He freezes, and a voice in his ear says, very coldly and quietly, "Please stay still. If you make any sudden movements, I shall not hesitate to kill you." The sharpness digs deeper, sparking a fuse of pain at the nape of his neck. "Nod if you understand me."

He nods.


	9. tired of lying in the sunshine

A/N: Sorry this is a day late. My poor computer was very sick. For a while, we thought it might not pull through; I was deprived of my Internet for close on three days! Oh, the horror. (Hashtag: _firstworldproblems_.) Still, it's fine now, and I hope y'all enjoy this chapter. Warning: it does contain an OC. Couldn't be helped. I'm really, really nervous about using them, so please do let me know in the comments whether or not you think this was a wise decision. Thank you. :)

* * *

_nine_

* * *

"Get out of the car," the voice says.

It's clear, high-pitched, a woman's voice or a boy's. John obeys, and Sherlock, after a moment's hesitation, copies him. The door slams behind him, and as he spins around he sees the owner of the voice slides out of the car to face them. It takes him a minute to make sense of what he's seeing.

Their adversary is no more than a child – seven or eight years old, at a guess. Stockily built, heavyset even, the combination of the full-lipped, pre-pubescent face battling for precedence with the close-cropped cornrows of hair, the man's woollen sweater worn past the knees, and the foot-long kitchen knife held tightly in both hands.

"It's all right," he says, keeping his voice low and calm. It's his doctor-voice – the tone he reserves for angry and hysterical patients who refuse to listen to reason, or small children afraid of injections. "We're not going to hurt you. What's your name?"

The child – and it's a girl, he can tell that now, the hair and build threw him off – doesn't move or speak. Her face is set like concrete, and she holds the knife inexpertly, hefting it more like a shield than something she intends to attack with. It should be comical, but John doesn't doubt that she'll do damage with it if she needs to.

"Listen, how old are you? Are you on your own?" he asks her, gently.

She opens her mouth, closes it again, and finally shakes her head. "No," she decides. "My dad's back at our house."

Sherlock looks as if he's about to say something, but John quickly puts his finger to his lips and mouths _stay out of this. _He turns back to the girl, trying to keep the incredulity from his face. "Really? Which house is it?"

She adjusts the knife, keeping her eyes on him. "I'm not telling you that."

John frowns. "Why not?"

"I'm not allowed."

He takes a step towards the girl, and she points the knife directly at him, bracing herself like an athlete. Her teeth are tightly gritted, making the line of her jaw look like a fighter's. "Don't come any closer! I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

John stops. It's only then that he realises where she's got all her strange threats from – they're quotes, probably lines from crime shows she's watched, books she's read. _Don't make any sudden movements. I will not hesitate to kill you. I'll hurt you if I have to. _Those words shouldn't be coming out of a child's mouth. Maybe it's a speech, he thinks; long practised and rehearsed beforehand in the event of this kind of situation. The last defense against the indefensible, the unknowable. "How old are you?" he repeats.

"She's eight years old," Sherlock says from behind him.

John turns and glares at him. "I wasn't asking you."

"Well, you know now, don't you?"

"How did you even – " He cuts himself off. "Never mind. So, um – what's your name?" he asks the girl.

Her eyes are still wary and narrowed with mistrust, her knuckles white on the knife's cheap plastic handle. "Kelly."

"Kelly. Right. So Kelly, how long have you been here?"

"Ages and ages. I saw you arrive," she adds, suspiciously. She scuffs a battered tennis shoe against the muddy ground. "You broke into the hotel. That's not allowed, either."

"We wouldn't have had anywhere to sleep, otherwise. It was cold last night, wasn't it? We couldn't have slept outside in that, could we?"

"Yeah," Kelly agrees. "It was pretty cold. It froze up my window. But you still shouldn't have broken in."

Sherlock steps forward to stand next to John, and his gaze sweeps over the little girl; she shifts uncomfortably, eyes darting left and right, unsure where to look. "Kelly," he says finally, "would you mind coming back to the hotel with us so we can ask you a few questions?"

John reflects that this sentence couldn't possibly have sounded more suspicious if it had tried. Not for the first time, Sherlock sounds like a combination of a telephone salesman, a police inspector and a paedophile. The coat doesn't help. He can hardly blame Kelly for taking a step backwards. "I'm not supposed to go with strange men," she says.

"Sherlock, she doesn't have to come with us," John hisses in an attempt to defuse the situation.

"Oh, she does," Sherlock returns quietly. "The question is whether she _will."_

John closes his eyes for a second, mind racing. When he opens them, a plan has begun to form, fragile as a soap bubble and just as easily burst. "Listen, Kelly," he starts. "How about you just walk with us back to the guesthouse? You can leave whenever you like. You don't have to come into the hotel. We just want to make sure you're all right."

She stares.

"What's it like?" John asks, very softly. "Being here, with nobody else, just you and your father? Is it strange, not seeing people on the beach or at the shops?"

Kelly's eyes look as if they're shimmering, but perhaps that's only a trick of the light. "Lonely," she says eventually. "Sometimes it's nice. Nobody annoys me, and I don't have to go to school or anything. But mostly it's lonely." Her whole body is tense, rigid as a wire, sharp teeth worrying at her lower lip, and much against his better judgment, John finds himself moving forwards to lay a calming hand on her arm.

The reaction is immediate, and perhaps predictable, if he'd thought about it a little more carefully._"Stay away!" _Kelly shrieks at him, and lashes out like a captive animal, caged but still vicious, still able to bite.

For a moment he thinks she's missed. Then he feels the jagged pain in his right arm, like teeth closing on his flesh, and the sudden wet warmth of blood. He can't hold back the hiss of pain that escapes his lips.

"Let me see," says Sherlock immediately, and before John can protest his arm is grabbed and held to the light. Ripped fabric flutters over a long cut, just wide enough to have been made by a blunt kitchen knife, and he can see the meat of his own flesh beneath the skin.

"I didn't mean to," he hears Kelly say, and looks up. The words are strong rather than shaky, and her face remains defiant, but when she blinks two trails of liquid spill over and run down her cheeks. She swipes at them furiously, like a mother reprimanding disobedient children.

John sighs. "It's OK," he says to her. "I'm not angry. You don't have to cry."

"I'm not _crying," _says Kelly with a shrivelling dose of contempt.

Sherlock mops the blood with the sleeve of his coat, and knots the torn sleeve around the cut, staunching it. When he's tied it off, he looks at Kelly with a glance that's cool and appraising, but not unkind.

"We're not making you do anything or go anywhere," he says. "You can follow us or you can stay here. It's your choice. If you're looking for a personal opinion, I'd highly recommend your accompanying us, but that's mostly a self-seeking thing."

"We have marshmallows," John adds hopefully, adjusting his makeshift bandage.

She thinks for a second, wooden eyes flickering. "All right," she says finally. "But I'm keeping the knife."

John almost smiles, then. "Sure," he says.

* * *

It is a late morning sometime in October and the sky is grey, the air is grey. There is a smell to it, not a strong smell particularly, but it is there and it is dark and just a little bit dangerous, and John can feel it all round him. It wraps him up in its dampness as he walks along the footpath, swinging a bit of stick at the wild mass of brambles that grow there, blackberries souring and smelling like mince pies, a Christmas dream gone rotten. When he whacks at them they fall to the ground, dark and sticky as the mud under his feet.

Sherlock is talking to Kelly, and yes, normally that would be inadvisable, but he seems to be coping OK, and she's not running and screaming for someone to help her, which has to be a positive, right? She still hasn't put the knife down, but she's not pointing it at them anymore. Now it just dangles by her side, a strip of cool fish-gleaming steel, a cooking utensil now and not a weapon – although blood, _his _blood, is still smeared like crushed red fruit upon the blade.

"Do you know what happened to everyone else in the village?" he says. His voice is deeper than usual, quieter, like the sound of a bow drawn across the lowest violin string. John can't remember which one's lowest – D, he thinks, maybe G, he doesn't know, it doesn't matter. He misses Sherlock's violin playing.

"I don't know," Kelly answers, eyes downcast. "They left. I guess they left."

"But your father stayed."

"He's back at our house," she says. The words have a mulish, defensive intonation. John expects Sherlock to press further, but he doesn't. Which is odd. He's picked up on the tone, John can see by his face, but he's choosing to drop the subject.

"Do you like living here?" he asks.

"Yeah. It's nice. Pretty." She thinks for a moment, brow furrowed. "'Cause everyone's friends, and they all know each other. And no one ever locks their doors, even."

"Except if they live in the guesthouse, clearly," Sherlock adds, a little sarcastically. Kelly just shrugs.

John drops the stick, dusting off his hands, and thinks of alley-cat screeches at four in the morning, the strings of a precious instrument tormented into producing a shrill and agonised wail, so painful to hear that you'd barely believe melody could ever have hidden itself beneath that sound, and he wonders how it's even possible to miss something like that. Then he thinks of the time when he first heard Sherlock play it properly, horsehair caressing honey-coloured curves like fingers tracing across the skin of a loved one, the lowest sounds reverberating cathedral echoes and the virtuoso darting effortlessly through the octaves, and decided that he didn't mind the early morning recitals so much after all.

Why is he thinking about this now?

"Well, here we are," Sherlock says, as they arrive at the gates. "You'll be going now, I imagine." He lifts his chin, glances down at her with splintered eyes. One elbow is braced against the metal of the gate.

For a time, Kelly hesitates, glancing to the gate and to the fields and back again as if she's watching a tennis tournament, clearly debating her options. On the one hand, there's home: the mysterious "father" they have yet to meet, the rows of empty houses, the abandoned beaches and dew-frosted grass. On the other, there's the two strange men who are inviting her into their abode with no reason other than wanting her to answer their questions. It's not exactly a trustworthy image, and John knows which option a sensible child would choose. Kelly, however, clearly isn't a sensible child.

"Fine," she says at last, and kicks open the gate with a pointed toe. "I'll come in. But only for five minutes."

It's only a small thing, but somehow, it feels like a victory.


	10. staying home to watch the rain

Just a warning - I may not be able to update for a while, as I am studying for GCSE mocks in January (aargh aargh) and have to revise for them seven or eight hours a day. It's gonna be difficult to find writing time. But fear not, this story will not be abandoned! Be patient, and I should have the workload sorted in time. Thanks, and don't forget to review. :)

* * *

_ten_

* * *

"Do you drink tea?" Sherlock enquires.

They're in the kitchen, boiling water hissing vapour into the air, melting the frost on the windows. John found the Primus stove in the cellar a few days ago – rusty and battered, but still functional. Ever since then, milkless tea has been their saving grace.

"Is tea like coffee?" Kelly says.

"Not really," Sherlock tells her. "Although both are members of the evergreen family, they have different chemical properties, and also, coffee's an addictive drug and possesses a far higher caffeine content. Whereas tea is more relaxing and far less likely to heighten mental stimulation."

Kelly thinks about this for a second. "So they're different?"

Sherlock sighs, resignedly. "Yes, they're different."

"Only, my mum says I can't have caffeine 'cause it'll stunt my growth."

"Urban myth," John says, as the kettle goes silent. He pours boiling water into three mugs, sending a cloud of steam billowing into the cramped room, adds a wrinkled teabag to each and stirs. So far, they've managed without milk, although the thing he pines for even more than milky tea is the constant bickering about whose turn it is to go to the supermarket. "Sherlock's been drinking coffee for years, and just look at him. Besides, height's not everything." He removes the teabags, places her mug on the table and takes a swig from his own, grimacing slightly.

Kelly pulls herself up onto the stool beside the table, and looks at him very seriously. "Why are you here?" she asks him.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Sherlock announces loftily, joining them. "It was all his fault."

"I don't even know your names," she says accusingly. Taking a careful gulp from the mug, she coughs slightly and pulls a revolted face. "That's dis_gus_ting_. _It tastes like mud!" She pushes it away from her, frowning.

John chooses to ignore this last remark. "Well," he starts, "my name's John Watson, and this – " he gestures " – is Sherlock Holmes. He's a bit annoying sometimes – " (Sherlock looks scandalised) " – so you don't have to talk to him if you don't want. And you're Kelly…?"

"Kelly Ademoye. With an 'e'. Like Anne of Green Gables, except people always write it down wrong. I can spell it out for you if you like."

"That won't be necessary," Sherlock says. He replaces his mug with a clatter and wipes his mouth, before resting his chin on his hands and regarding Kelly with an intent expression. "So, little Kelly Ademoye of The Golden Sands Resort. Exactly how long have you been living here all on your own?"

John stares at him, nonplussed, but he's not looking anywhere except at Kelly. Her face looks like the collapse of empire. "Alone?" she stammers, eyes wide.

"Yes. How long? Since it first started happening? Or was it after that? I don't know why you're lying about it, but you are. Don't make the assumption that I haven't noticed, Kelly. I notice everything."

She glances from one to the other, as if searching for help. "I'm not alone," she says confusedly, after a time. "I've got my dad. I told you already."

"You _say_ you have," Sherlock corrects her. "But you haven't, really, have you? At least, not any more. Not for a while now." Kelly is no longer looking at him; her eyes stare off into some indeterminate space, as though fixed on something neither of them can see. "How long?" Sherlock presses. "Days? Weeks? Months? You don't even know any more, do you?"

John's starting to understand, now. "He went away, didn't he, Kelly?" he says softly. "Just like the others." There's a kind of faint whistling in his ears, like tinnitus, and he instinctively looks over at the kettle. It isn't boiling. The kitchen is silent.

"He didn't leave me," Kelly announces in a defiant tone, the colour starting to bloom on her cheeks. "He would _never_ have left me. You don't know anything about him, so shut up!"

"If he's still there, take us to him!" Sherlock retorts. "Take us over to your house and show us this mysterious reclusive father that doesn't like people to see him!"

"I told you, I'm not _allowed!"_

"And who said you weren't allowed?" Sherlock's eyes are bright as stars. "Was it your father? Or was it someone else?"

"Stop talking!" Kelly bites out. Her hands creep up to cover her ears, her face beginning to distort – not tears, not anger, this is something else. "Just…stop…"

Sherlock's face clearly shows he has no intention of stopping, but just as he's gearing up for a full-scale interrogation, John leans across the table and puts one hand on his arm. "Sherlock," he says, very quietly, and that's all he needs to say. He could easily have said a lot more – such as, _Sherlock, stop, don't question her any more, she's eight years old and she's with two people she doesn't know and she really doesn't need this, and if you make her cry I will throw your violin out of the window, not that you'd care seeing as I haven't heard you play it in weeks,_ but somehow that one word is all that's required. And he can see that what he wanted to say has got across, even though he didn't voice it, because Sherlock closes his mouth with an effort that looks like physical pain and presses his lips together until they turn white.

"It's all right," John says. "It's OK."

"_No,_ it's _not!"_

John remembers himself saying that, in the Baskerville lab, angry and hysterical, all rational thought gone from him. It seems like a hundred years ago.

"No," he says. "I suppose you're right."

Kelly looks flummoxed, plainly not used to adults thinking that she is right.

"It's not OK yet. But it will be."

"How?" she says, face crumpling again. "How will it?"

"I don't know. But it will. Trust me."

Kelly looks up at him, a little apprehensively. "Do I have to stay here now? With you?"

"Have to? God, no. Of course not. No, you don't _have_ to at all. I mean, obviously you can if you want, but…" John frowns. "Hold on, where've you been staying lately? Seeing as your dad is…"

There's no good way to finish that sentence, so he doesn't try.

"I've been staying in our house," Kelly says. "At first I ate stuff from the fish restaurant but it all went funny so I had to stop going there, and then at first I ate the stuff in our house, like spaghetti, but then – " She cuts herself off, chewing her lip, then continues in a rush, "Then I had to stop that too. I couldn't cook it 'cause I'm not allowed to go down to the river, and I hurt my hand trying to use the tin opener. I haven't had anything proper to eat for ages."

John frowns, trying to calculate how long it would take for the supplies in the fish restaurant to go off, and for the pasta to have been eaten as well. _And how could she have been eating the spaghetti at all if she can't even cook it?_ he wonders. He opens his mouth. Sherlock beats him to it.

"And how long…exactly…has it been, Kelly? Do you know that?"

She picks up the mug and sips at it experimentally, makes the disgusted face once more and places it down. "A few weeks. Maybe a month. Not any longer than that."

"Really? You're certain about that?"

She doesn't say anything.

John waits, holding his breath, unaware that he is doing so.

"There are weeds, Kelly," Sherlock says quietly. "Growing over the car. The Jeep in that field? You know it? Judging by the worn leather and the marks on the steering wheel, not to mention the fact that the key was left in the lock, it was well-used in day-to-day life, but only by two people at most, more likely one – the seatbelts in the back seats were practically untouched, the inertial reel had clearly not been utilised for some years, and the handles on the inside were not marked as the handles in the front two doors had been. But the car was large, seven-seater, with a carriage, so obviously it was meant to carry something other than passengers. It was used daily to fetch supplies from nearby towns. The fact that it had not been used for a period of roughly six months indicates that the inhabitants of your little village have not been present for a good time longer than you'd like us to think." Sherlock pauses to glance her up and down, critically. "Someone's been looking after you, though, I can see that. You said that you'd eaten the spaghetti, then contradicted yourself, saying you couldn't cook it because there was no water and you weren't allowed to go down to the river. But there hasn't been water since the faucets stopped working, months ago, which implies that someone else was cooking it for you. It can't have been that long since you last had something to eat, otherwise you'd be showing signs of malnutrition. Not only that, but you've washed recently, so someone must have brought the water up for you. Who else was here?"

Her voice is a bow whispering over the highest violin string, hovering at breaking point.

"How can you _know_ all that?"

"I notice things. It's not exactly difficult."

There's a clatter from outside, and they all jump. It's only a squirrel, though, knocking the lid off the metal dustbin outside the kitchen window. John breathes again, cupping his hands round the empty mug for the semblance of warmth that lingers there still.

"It took him longer," Kelly says, almost absently.

It doesn't sound as if she's talking to them, but even so, Sherlock pounces immediately. "What do you mean by that?"

Her gaze snaps back to him. "What?"

"You said "it took him longer"."

"No, I didn't."

"You did!"

John breaks in to keep the peace. "Not now, Sherlock. And Kelly, calm down, it's all right – but just listen to me for a minute, please. I don't want to pry, but we do need to know who's been looking after you. Because if there's anyone else here, anyone at all…"

"There isn't."

"What do you mean?"

Kelly rests her elbows on the table, placing her chin on her hands. "There isn't anyone. Not for ages. I already said. Except – " She cuts herself off sharply.

"Except for who?" Sherlock prods.

Kelly's eyes flicker, the pupils dilating then contracting again. John imagines them pulsing, like tiny hearts, and feels his own heart beat a little faster.

_"Them," _she whispers, and John feels himself shiver. Something about that one word, its intonation and all that it infers, is queer, uncanny. His gaze drifts once more to the window. For a moment, he's certain he sees something – a dark figure outlined sharply against the horizon – and he opens his mouth to shout out a warning. Then he blinks, shivers, looks again.

It's gone.


	11. you are young and life is long

A/N: I'm back! Well, for now, anyway. Still got the mocks going on, but they should be over in about a week. (School's a sadist, isn't it?...) Anyway, I hope you enjoy this new !flashback! chapter, and that it meets expectations. Reviews, as always, are love.

* * *

_eleven_

* * *

It had started with blurring.

Not obvious blurring, not the kind that made you look around and think, hey, that guy over there's kind of blurred, looks like I need a new contact prescription. This was the kind of blurring that sneaked up on you when your back was turned, a change so subtle it was almost unnoticeable. It didn't exactly render people invisible: just made them fade into the background a little more, like the painting that's hung on your landing for seven years, the scratch on the wall that you barely even glance at any longer.

Sherlock was terrified by it. Not that he said anything, of course. He never did. But John had seen his face at Baskerville, seen the way his hands shook and his eyes looked at nothing, and knew that what was happening wasn't just imagination – or if it was, it was in Sherlock's imagination too.

One afternoon he went out – no warning, no note, just left and slammed the door behind him. Didn't even take his phone. John cancelled the appointment he'd made with his girlfriend (Gaina, was it? Gretel? No, that was ridiculous, and what did it matter anyway because he barely remembered what her face looked like any more, and it's not just him, it _can't_ be just him that feels this), and he waited tensely at the flat for Sherlock to return.

For hours, he didn't. John turned the TV on, tried to concentrate on the footy match, but the sound was too loud in the empty flat and he switched it off, leaving a fuzzy silence. He tried to organise his books into alphabetical order, then gave up when he realised they already were in alphabetical order. He switched the radio on and tried to cook a frittata, using a recipe that he'd cut out of the Guardian a few weeks previously, but was forced to stop when he found the sink full of a mysterious orange liquid, the surface occasionally disturbed by small explosions of air bubbles. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know its origins. However, he was guessing it wasn't Fanta. Abandoning the attempt at cooking, he returned to the living room and collapsed on to the sofa.

At around six in the morning, John was startled awake from his half-sleep by the rattle of keys outside. Stumbling to his feet, he went to the front door and pulled it open before it could be fully unlocked, only to find himself face to face with a wild-looking Sherlock – hands quivering, face the colour of marble, narrow eyes so wide that the whites were visible all around the iris.

"Nothing," he said by way of greeting. "Even when I look at them properly, there's nothing. They're like empty boxes, there just isn't anything _there!" _He kicked the door shut and began to pace up and down the hallway, fists clenching and unclenching. "What's happening to me?" he burst out suddenly, spinning on his heel to face John. "This ability, this – this _trick." _The word came out scathingly, and somehow John recognised the intonation – it was an echo of something that had been said before, but he couldn't for the life of him place it. "It's all I have," Sherlock said, voice suddenly low and halting. "I can't lose it, John, I just _can't – "_

"It's all right." John stepped out of the doorway, keeping their gazes locked. "It's not just you. This is really happening, isn't it?"

Sherlock's mouth worked for a few seconds, as if struggling to form words, before he finally managed to get out, "You – you've seen it too?"

"Yes. I don't know how to explain it, and I don't know what it is. But I've seen it too." Sherlock followed him back into the living room, sitting down on the sofa next to him. "You can't see them properly any more, can you? People. They're…" He fumbled for the right word, came up with, "Blurring." It wasn't exactly right, but it was as close as he could get.

"What's causing it?"

It felt strange to hear Sherlock asking John an honest question – not sarcastic, not rhetorical, but instead a genuine request for advice. John shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe it's just the two of us, just going a little crazy together. Do you know if insanity's catching at all? I always knew that living with you was bad for my mental health."

Sherlock gave him a look.

"OK, fine. So maybe there's a rational explanation. Maybe – "

Sherlock broke in. "What explanation could there _possibly _be?"

"Don't expect me to know! You're the one with all the answers, aren't you? Come up with a solution!"

"Why is it always _me _that has to come up with a solution?"

"Your _trick, _as you call it. It's not like you ever cease to remind everyone. You're the brainchild in this scenario. I'm just…" He stopped again. What was he? Sidekick? No, definitely not. Conductor of light? God, no. "I'm just your friend," he said, lamely. "That's all."

"You're a lot more than that," Sherlock said.

Neither of them spoke. The sound of the radio that John had forgotten to turn off filtered through from the kitchen, its garbled speech invading their thoughts.

"Anyway," Sherlock added after a moment. _"I've_ never called it a trick. That was Sebastian Wilkes, remember?"

"So that was who it was! I knew I'd heard someone say it before." _Why did I forget that? _he asked himself.

Sherlock dropped his gaze, forehead creasing. "I don't understand," he said, almost under his breath. Which was quite a feat, and impressive to hear, considering that those were probably the three words that Sherlock hated most in the English language.

"No," John said, thinking about it. "Neither do I."

And that was fine, for a while. Well, it wasn't, of course, but they could pretend. They could fabricate. If they didn't talk about it, it wasn't happening. So it was fine. It was all fine.

Then the blurring began to spread.

* * *

At first, John had attributed it to poor sleep, lapses in memory, lack of interest, lack of concentration. But as it began to happen more and more frequently, he realised that it was more than that. It was as if his brain was being invaded by a thief – a thief that crept in at the dead of night and stole away people and faces and sometimes entire conversations.

He couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment when he understood that something was happening to them. Perhaps it was after he'd spoken to Lestrade about a case, then emerged afterwards and realised he'd lost the entire exchange. He could remember what he'd said, some of it, but nothing else. That part of his mind had been wiped totally blank, as if someone had run amok with a blackboard eraser. Or perhaps it was after he went out for a meal with his new girlfriend

_(" – dyes her hair, has just ended previous damaging relationship with a man ten years her senior and not looking for any form of dedication. Better break it off now and spare yourself the mess."_

_"Do you mind? Seriously, ease off just for once. You're in my work life and my home life, I don't want you infiltrating my bloody love life as well. You do realise that so far, you're ve ruined pretty much every date I've ever been on?" _

_"That's an exaggeration. Besides, you ruin your dates without my help."_

_"Right. That's it. You've crossed the line." _

_"What line?" _

_"It's a metaphor, Sherlock.") _

and arrived back at the flat with no idea what she looked like, what her name was, what her voice sounded like, what they'd talked about…

It was as if he was caught in a mist, and the further away people were from him, the less solid they became. The ones he was close to – Molly, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade and the others – were a little more distinct, but there remained the unshakeable feeling that they were slipping away from him faster than he could hold on to them. The number of calls to the flat dwindled, almost imperceptibly. When he rang someone, it seemed to go through to the answerphone 90% of the time, and even when it didn't, it was rare that he could recall why he'd phoned them in the first place, or what he had wanted to say.

The one thing that never changed was Sherlock. However far away he got – and it was further these days than it had ever been; he rarely emerged from his room, and their conversations had been reduced to one-liners – he remained just as vivid as ever, a stark black outline amidst the multitude of wispy, ghostlike figures drifting in the background.

It was just like him, John thought, to obstinately refuse to disappear. Sherlock was the kind of person that was not forgotten easily.

* * *

Then, one day, he'd just been walking down a road nearby, not thinking about anything in particular, not really going anywhere, when he realised he didn't know the time, and he didn't have a watch or his phone with him. He looked around for someone who he could ask. Then he realised he was alone on the street.

There was no panic. Not initially, anyway. Calmly, John turned a corner into a nearby avenue that led to the main road. There had to be someone he could ask. He'd passed people on the way here, hadn't he? It was obviously just the time of day when everyone was indoors, working or eating their lunch.

It was funny, but now that he thought about it, he couldn't quite recall passing by anyone. He had, of course, he was sure of it, but he couldn't quite remember any details. Mentally, he fished for images, snatches of overheard conversations, but drew a blank.

John finally emerged on to the main road, and glanced up and down. Nothing. It was deserted. There were a couple of parked cars, but when he inspected them, he found all of them to be empty. The normal roar of traffic and babble of passers-by was absent. It sounded odd, and he forced a yawn to see if his ears had popped.

They hadn't.

He got back to the flat to find Sherlock sitting cross-legged on the sofa, looking blankly down at his mobile.

"All right?" John asked him.

"My brother's not picking up," Sherlock said, fiddling with the buttons. His voice was flat. "Mycroft always picks up. I don't think he even _has_ an answering machine."

John nodded. Then he said, "Have you looked outside recently, Sherlock?"

"I haven't. Why?"

"No reason," said John.

They both knew what he meant.

* * *

They spent another week in the flat. The normal clatterings and hummed songs from below that bespoke the presence of Mrs Hudson were missing, and the rooms were shrouded in an eerie quiet, like a morgue. The heating had stopped working a while ago, and winter was coming on fast, lacing the windows with frost. Sherlock tuned his violin obsessively, spending hours hunched over it, plucking discordantly at the strings. "The cold makes it warp," he said tersely, when John brought it up.

Most nights, they slept in the living room, Sherlock on the sofa and John in the armchair. It made his shoulder cramp. He couldn't bring himself to care.

At the end of that week, late on a Sunday morning, Sherlock stood up, so suddenly that John jumped and almost spilled his tea. "We have to get out," he announced.

"Why?" John said. He didn't question the "we".

"Because we can't stay here." Sherlock went to the table and began scooping things up, pens, test tubes, a half-shredded pack of digestive biscuits. "Get your stuff together. We're going."

"Going where?"

"Don't know. Don't care. Just going. For God's sake, hurry up! I'm going_ mad_ in here." Sherlock swept out of the living room, and John heard the clatters and crashes from the room down the hall, and the occasional grunt of effort.

"Don't take the kitchen sink, will you," John said, even though he knew Sherlock couldn't hear him. He made his way upstairs to his own room and leaned against the door, staring around.

Odd as it seemed, there wasn't really anything he wanted to bring. Despite this, he went for the practical option and shoved some spare clothes in a rucksack, along with his razor, shaving cream, a few books and his laptop. The collection barely filled half of the bag. He stared at it for a moment, feeling slightly inadequate, then gave a mental _whatever _and pulled the rucksack over his shoulder.

As he left, he glanced back. His room looked no tidier than normal, but somehow it seemed strange to him, alien. It didn't really look like something that belonged to him any longer. At least it wasn't as empty as Sherlock's. Ironically, that was one of the cleanest rooms in the flat, mostly because he had a tendency to just chuck everything out of the the door to keep it just as bare as it had been when he had moved in.

He stepped out on to the landing, closing the door tightly.

* * *

"It's like an obstacle course," John said.

They were driving down the M11. It was early in the morning, and the sun was only just beginning to rise, a pale, far-off disc lost between the clouds.

At the sound of John's voice, Sherlock turned his head, confused. "What?"

"Well." John peered out of the window. "You have to go around all the dead ones, don't you?"

"Don't call them that."

"Well, call a spade a bloody shovel, Sherlock. Look at them. Those are dead cars."

Sherlock shrugged.

"I hate seeing them," John said, closing his eyes and swaying gently back and forth.

"You'll get car-sick, doing that," Sherlock said, watching him. Then, _"Fuck!" _as they lurched to a stop again, finding the gap between the overturned National Express coach and the Sainsbury's lorry slightly narrower than he'd expected it to be.

"I'll get car-sick anyway," muttered John, "the way you drive."

"My driving is _fine."_

Minutes passed, and then John snorted, sudden and and sharp.

"What?"

"We're on the M11."

"So?"

"So…what's the difference? It's always looked like this."


	12. and there is time to kill today

_twelve_

* * *

Sherlock's voice is calm as he speaks once more, breaking the atmosphere. "Who are "they", Kelly?"

Kelly shivers slightly. "Dunno," she says. "They just…are. I've not seen one properly. But they come at night, mostly. Sometimes in the daytime as well. But not that often."

"How long have they been here?" John asks quietly.

Kelly looks evasive. "Dunno," she repeats.

Sherlock leans forward. "I'll rephrase that. How long have _you_ been able to see them?"

For a moment, her mouth works soundlessly, as if struggling to form words, and her eyes dart back and forth between them. John waits, his heart beating rabbit-fast again. Sherlock, in comparison, looks just as composed as always, though his eyes are perhaps a little brighter than usual, his posture a little more tense. Finally, Kelly's shoulders slump and she seems to give in.

"I've always seen them," she confesses. "Since…well, forever, really. They've always been here." She swallows. "I tried to say, only nobody ever believed me. And a while ago everybody else started seeing them as well. They pretended they didn't, though."

"People are good at that," Sherlock says.

"Good at what?"

"At not seeing things."

"Or pretending not to see things," John adds.

"Quite." Sherlock narrows his eyes. "So you've always seen them, have you, Kelly? What do they look like?"

"I don't know." She fiddles with the handle of her mug, staring down. "They aren't…you can't look at them properly, not like normal things. I've seen them in mirrors, sometimes. Or out of the corners of my eyes. That's why they come at night, I think. It makes them harder to see."

"And do you know what they want?"

She meets his eyes again, looking wary. "How do you know they want something?"

"Just a guess," Sherlock says airily. "So they _do_ want something. What is it?"

Something in Kelly's expression changes, then. She blinks slowly, in a way that makes John's insides feel strangely cold. Perhaps it's in the way she holds Sherlock's gaze, steady and cool, replacing the hunted look that she wore just seconds ago. Whatever it is, there's suddenly a kind of _unchildishness _about her that sends a chill down his spine.

"They're hungry," she says. Her voice is lower than normal, utterly without intonation.

John frowns. "Hungry? What do you mean, hungry?"

Kelly shrugs, clearly growing bored of the subject. "Can I go now?" she asks him.

"Go? Where to?"

"I need to fetch my things." As suddenly as it appeared, the oddness melts away from her face. She widens her eyes, looking hopeful. "I _can_ stay here, can't I?"

"Of course you can stay here," John says, bemused.

"I'll be back in ten minutes," Kelly says, and she swings herself off the chair and starts to walk away, scuffing her foot on the leg of the table as she goes. "You can drink my tea if you want," she shouts from the hallway. "I don't like it."

The kitchen door slams behind her, leaving John and Sherlock alone.

"Well," John says into the silence. "That was interesting."

"Yes," Sherlock muses. "Yes, it was rather, wasn't it?"

John leans back in his chair, and tries to sort out the jumbled, disorganised mess of his thoughts.

How many times, he thinks, do people walk down the same road, their eyes passing over the houses and the people, barely registering the small insignificances that become tangled in their radar? John used to be like that – uncaring, unnoticing. That was before he met Sherlock. Mycroft had put it best, really, the first time the two of them had met. _Most people blunder around this city and all they see are streets and shops and cars,_ he'd said, _but when you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield._

It's true, as well. John can't help wondering, even now, how Sherlock even copes with that: the constant onslaught of overriding information, that forced, unwanted intimacy of a stranger's darkest secrets and shames and scandals. It would have driven anyone else mad.

Not that Sherlock isn't. Mad, that is. The insanity is a disease, he sometimes thinks; anyone who spends too much time around him finds it leeching onto them, insinuating its way into the corners of their minds, until one day they look up and realise, to their vague surprise, that nothing can really amaze them any longer.

Most human beings have a kind of scale in their head – a Weird O'Meter, you could call it. Some people, the ones who are better at dealing with crises and catastrophes, barely ever stray above the halfway mark. Others panic easily, and are pushed into meltdown by the smallest step out of their depth. John likes to think he belongs to the first category, but for the last four years – ever since that first meeting in the lab, in fact – the needle on his own Weird O'Meter has been right up on the high end of the scale, occasionally banging jerkily against the red.

Now, at long last, the meter has broken.

"Nothing will surprise me ever again," John says to Sherlock. "Never. Weirdness has ceased to become weird, and has become normal. I can no longer be outweirded. Challenge accepted, by the way."

Sherlock nods, slowly, without looking at him. "I think what is required just at the moment," he says, "or, at least under these particular circumstances, is a certain…suspension of disbelief."

"That's your solution? Suspension of disbelief?"

"We have to believe it," Sherlock says. "We haven't a choice."

"But how _can_ we?" John demands, frustrated. "How can we believe it?"

"Oh, John, don't you _see?"_

Sherlock turns to him at last, and his face is wild, eyes alight. John stares into them, and finds himself going a little breathless, though he's not entirely sure why. "We live in a universe that is larger and more complex than we can possibly comprehend. Every day, impossible things happen. And do you know what people do? _They deal with it. _All around the world, people every day experience one-chance-in-a-million events, and not one of them will refuse to believe the evidence of their senses!"

John shoots a glance towards the open door of the kitchen. The hallway beyond is empty, of course, and he feels a bit stupid for expecting it to be otherwise. "You think she'll come back?"

"Of course." Sherlock starts to collect the mugs, hanging them by the handles from one index finger, careless of the tea that slops on to the floor. "Where else would she go?"

"Back to her house?" John suggests, wincing as the mugs are tossed into the sink with a dull crack.

"No, she wouldn't do that. She asked if she could stay, didn't she? Besides, she seems reasonably intelligent for her age; she knows that we could find her if we wanted to. There aren't too many houses round here." He runs a hand through his hair and groans quietly, almost under his breath.

"What? What is it?"

"A child staying here. We'll never have a moment's peace again." He stamps out into the hallway and pulls shut the front door that Kelly left ajar.

"Don't be so overdramatic," John says, following him. "I'm sure it'll be fine. Anyway, it's hardly a long-term solution, is it?"

"Then what is?" Sherlock demands.

And there John is stumped, because he really has no idea whatsoever how to answer. He's not stupid; he knows that, sooner or later, one or both of them will die, and then the earth truly will be empty. Abandoned, deserted, a derelict ruin bearing nothing but the scars that its former inhabitants have carved. Two men are not enough to carry on a legacy.

"I don't think there is one," he admits.

Sherlock leans back against the door, looking irritatingly smug. "Exactly," he says.

Determined not to let him win for once, John scouts his gaze round the hallway in search of an answer. He's taken by surprise when his eyes brush past, and then land on, the object on the hall table. It's an ugly, scratched grey thing, like a relic from a war museum, with spiky aerials protruding from it at seemingly random points. He doesn't remember it being there last time he looked. "What's that?" he asks, pointing at it.

"Radio." Sherlock doesn't even have to look.

"How long's that been there?"

Sherlock glances at him, puzzled. "It's always been there."

"Really?" John wrinkles his forehead. He's never noticed it before. "What's it for?"

"In the event of a crisis, I'd imagine," Sherlock says carelessly. "Fire alarm, emergency evacuation, something like that. They're in a few of the upstairs rooms as well."

John brushes his hand over the radio, releasing a puff of dust motes. "How do they work?"

"Individually. They're sort of a 1950's alternative to phones, you see, so someone can transmit a message from one in their room to the one in the hallway. Not a particularly efficient system. So if it is, as you say, short-term, we're brought to the next immediate and pressing question."

John blinks, trying to adjust to the abrupt conversational swerve. Sometimes he thinks Sherlock's mind doesn't really function in the linear way most peoples' do; John's known him to rekindle a topic they left behind days ago, or to finish a sentence hours after he started it, and then look genuinely confused when nobody knows what he's talking about. "Right. Pressing question. Er – what's that, then?"

"Child. Living organism. Needs sustenance. What are we going to feed her?" Sherlock looks triumphant.

"She's not a cat, Sherlock," John tells him.

"I didn't say she was."

"Well, obviously, we're going to have to leave here at some point. I'd suggest going back to London, but…"

"But what?"

"Well." John hesitates, trying to think of the correct way to phrase it. "When we were last there, you went a little…stir-crazy. Remember? I'm not so sure that it would be good for you."

"Well, thank God _you_ aren't running my life for me," Sherlock says sarcastically.

"You were the one who made us both up sticks and leave, Sherlock!"

"As far as I can recall, I didn't _make_ you do anything. You accompanied me of your own free will. But quibbling aside, even I can discern that a city would be the more sensible location at present. For now, we'd better sort out where the child's going to sleep." He wanders over to the window and stares out, seemingly without intention.

"There's a room across the landing," John says. "I can probably make up a bed for her there."

Sherlock doesn't reply, tapping his fingernails absently against the glass. A bird calls out somewhere across the hills, its cry thin and wavering as a harp string.

"Sherlock," John starts. Something gets caught in his throat, and he swallows it down before starting again. "About last night…"

Tap-tap, tap-tap. "What about it?"

"I was just wondering," John says. Then he stops again. Sherlock doesn't press him to continue, which surprises him a little. Normally, there's nothing he hates more than people who don't finish their sentences, except possibly for bad grammar, aeroplane travel and Scotland Yard. After a moment, he gathers his thoughts and continues. "You remember how you came into my room?"

"Vividly."

"Do you think that maybe – "

He doesn't get the chance to finish. There's a firm rap on the door, a sharp distinctive rhythm: _dun-dundun-dun-dun, dun dun._ Sherlock breaks away from the window and moves swiftly towards the kitchen door. "That'll be Kelly," he says, opening it. "Better let her in, John. It's starting to get cold."


	13. and then one day you find

_thirteen_

* * *

It's just gone 3am when the telephone rings.

At first, the sound only mingles with the dream John's having, and he doesn't pay it much attention; it's only after about seven rings that he begins to wake up, and it's three more by the time he's sitting up in bed, blind and disorientated in the darkness. His hand flutters over the wall, searching for the light switch. When he finds it, he flicks it up and down repeatedly, growing more and more frustrated, before he remembers. _Damn it, _he thinks as he climbs out of bed.

The room is almost pitch black, the candles long extinguished. The telephone, squatting like a shiny toad on its table on the other side of the room, continues to trill cheerfully. John walks towards where he assumes the window is, and promptly crashes into the wardrobe.

Swearing, he clambers to his feet again and, with hands out in front of him like a blind man, fumbles his way to the slat of moonlight creeping through the curtains. He wrenches them wide, providing just enough light to see by, and picks up the telephone.

"Hello?" he says into the mouthpiece, uncertainly.

There's no reply, only a faint crackling, buzzing sound. It's too erratic to be the dialling tone. John shifts the phone to his other ear, wondering if the strange static noises are down to a build-up of earwax, but no – whoever is on the other end remains mute.

_Whoever is on the other end…_

"Sherlock?" he asks uncertainly, but his gut already tells him that it isn't Sherlock. Nor is it Kelly, unless she's been sleepwalking and grabbed the phone. There's only one way to find out, and that's to check their rooms.

But to check Kelly's, he'll have to go across the landing. John's eyes flit to the door. In the cracks around it there is a blackness – a blackness that seems to spread, murkier than the bedroom, than the night sky outside his window. He imagines stepping out into that dark, gaping hole, and shudders involuntarily.

"Hello?" he repeats. "Is there anyone there? Hello?"

No voice presents itself, but there's a feeling on the other end of oppression, of _waiting. _For a couple of seconds, even the buzzing sounds die, leaving behind only a soundless presence. John holds still, breath trapped in his lungs. Abruptly, there is a clatter, and a thud, and a scritching, scuffling sound.

The line goes dead.

* * *

He doesn't tell Sherlock.

He's not sure why. Perhaps he doesn't want him to worry (not that he would, not really). Perhaps he wants to pretend that it never happened. Perhaps a small, subconscious part of him thinks he really did just dream it all. It's not until that morning that he remembers that the telephones don't work, and that they haven't worked for a long while; and that's certainly solid evidence towards the dream theory, at any rate.

For whichever reason, he stays silent. When Sherlock awkwardly asks him if he slept all right, he replies simply, "Fine," and switches on the Primus stove. Neither of them mention yesterday's truncated conversation.

Kelly appears halfway through the morning, puffy-eyed and yawning in a pair of yellow pyjamas. She's borrowed one of the guesthouse bathrobes. It's comically large on her, dragging on the floor, sleeves rolled up past the elbows.

"Have we got toast?" she demands by way of greeting.

"No toast," John says. "No bread. No food, except for pasta and baked beans. And tea."

Kelly pulls a hideous face, squinting her eyes and pushing out one cheek with her tongue.

"Attractive," Sherlock mutters, hiding behind a desiccated copy of the Times. John walks behind him, eyeing the page and wondering where he found it.

_"Don'_t read over my shoulder," Sherlock orders without turning round. "It's distracting and unnecessary. Besides, this is from 2010, hardly groundbreaking. Mrs Baldock was using it to block a draught through one of the doors."

"Who's – "

"The housekeeper," Sherlock responds briskly. He flattens the newspaper on the table, out the creases.

"I'm bored," Kelly announces. "Is there anything to do?"

Oh, Jesus, John thinks to himself. Not another one.

Sherlock drops a pen on the table and pushes back his chair. "There's a Sudoku on page twelve," he informs her. "Now be quiet."

Kelly seats herself in his abandoned chair and flips to the referenced page, tongue behind her teeth.

"Where are you going?" John asks him.

"Out. I need some air."

He waits for the door to slam, then stands for a moment, listening to Kelly's absent-minded humming. It wanders in and out of melody, tuneless and discordant. "Sleep well?" John asks her, walking over to inspect the state of the sink.

She breaks off from the humming. "Not really."

"Oh. Why's that, then?"

She scans the grid thoughtfully before crossing out a number, slashing the pen across with unnecessary violence as if trying to cut its throat. "I'm a bad sleeper," she says. "Mum says I was even when I was a baby. It's all right."

"I can probably find something to give you, if you like," John offers. "Help you sleep better. I'm not sure if there's any honey and lemon, but I can find you some pills – "

"Nope. I'm _fine."_ She cuts him off, ending the conversation quite definitively.

"Right." John's a bit lost for words. "OK, then."

In the hallway, the radio crackles.

The sound is startling, making John's fingers slip on the broken china and drop the cracked mug back into the sink. Slowly, he lifts his head and turns it towards the source of the noise. The low ceiling makes the electronic whirr sounds flatter than he'd have expected, almost muffled.

Feeling as if he's wading through water, he moves towards the hallway.

Just as he's approaching it, the whirring dies, leaving behind a heavy shroud of quiet. John stares at the receiver in his hand. It would be hard to imagine something less threatening – the radio is ancient and finely coated with dust, and looks as if it belongs in an air raid shelter or the house of an old woman who refuses to move into the twenty-first century – but paradoxically, that same quaintness lends it an air of menace.

_They're in a few of the upstairs rooms as well. _

"But there's nobody up there," he mumbles, almost under his breath, before realising that he's only addressing himself. He's grown so accustomed to Sherlock being beside him during these uncanny sorts of incidents that it's odd to find himself alone.

Or is he?

But no, it's impossible. The sane, rational part of him knows that it's impossible. There can't be anyone in the house. He and Sherlock checked the upstairs rooms not long ago. They're shut up, now – locked with the heavy, jangling set of keys that they'd found in the drawer of the kitchen dresser.

"Why's it making that noise?" says a voice from beside him.

He nearly jumps out of his skin, then relaxes again, turning to face Kelly. "Oh, it's you. Don't creep up on me like that, will you? You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"Sorry. What was it?"

He sighs. "I don't know."

"It was coming from upstairs, wasn't it?" She cranes her head, glances up the dimly lit stairway. "You don't s'pose – that someone's got up there? And is up there now?"

"I shouldn't think so, no. It was probably just, um, a glitch." He's lying, he knows it, but it doesn't matter. There's no point in both of them panicking. However, John can see she's not buying it. "Look," he says, feeling rather tired all of a sudden. "How about I put a stop to all this by going upstairs, and having a look? Hm?"

Startlingly, she shakes her head. "No."

"Why not?"

"I just don't think you should, that's all."

"Come on, Kelly! If there is someone up there – and I'm not saying there is – then they're locked in and they need help, don't they?" She bites her lip, unconvinced. "Listen." John tries to inject a note of reassurance into his voice. "What's going to happen? There's no one here except us. You know there isn't."

After a long moment, she gives in. "OK."

"If you feel that nervous about it, I'll take the walking stick," John says. He lifts it from the umbrella stand and pretends to brandish it. "I've hit people on the head with sticks before and I'm very good at it. Now stop worrying, all right?"

He takes the keys with him as he goes – and the radio, so that he can trace the original source – and makes for the stairs.


	14. ten years have got behind you

_fourteen_

* * *

Kelly follows him up on to the first landing, then hangs back, fingers clutching fearfully at the banisters. Her feet twist, toes pointing inwards.

"You don't have to follow me if you don't want," John says wryly.

"Maybe I – " She's chewing on her lip still, muffling the words. "Maybe I should – "

"You could always go and fetch Sherlock. He's outside somewhere, probably not far."

"All right," she says, after a degree of thought. "I'll do that."

"Good girl," he tells her.

She gives him the kind of look that suggests the next person to call her a "good girl" will meet a horrible and untimely doom. John sighs. "I won't be long. If you come back before me, give me a shout."

Walking stick in hand, he starts up the next staircase. When he glances back over his shoulder, she's gone, though he hears still the scuffle of her feet dying a floor below him.

He paces slowly up and down each corridor, and outside every door, he stops to call, "Hello?" into the radio speaker, listening for the answering echo. But there's nothing. He is aware, suddenly, of the thickening silence; it hangs around him like a shroud, making every noise seem uncomfortably loud. He's not afraid of it – there's no sense in that – but something in Kelly's nervousness has got to him, and he finds himself moving slower, more cautiously. Ears pricked, he strains to pick out anything unusual, but the quiet is all-encompassing.

The windows up here are different from the ones on the first two floors – they're frosted glass, allowing through only a faint milky light. The cracks underneath the doors are dark. He halts briefly to glance up and down the gloomy passage. There's no sign of life here – not a creak, nothing to show that anyone has ever inhabited these rooms.

Halfway along a fourth-floor corridor, his efforts are rewarded.

It's an ordinary wooden door, not different in appearance from the others, but when he calls again, he hears it. His own voice, hissing uncertainly back at him through the wall. _Hello? _it says, and the surprise sends what feels like a tiny electric shock through his system before he realises. Breathing fast and fumbling only slightly, he leans the walking stick up against the wall, goes for the keys, finds the one marked with the right number, and inserts it into the lock.

It's stiff, but with a stronger twist he manages to turn it fully. The lock clicks open, and he pushes open the door, unsure what exactly – if anything – will be inside.

But the room he finds himself in is deserted, and utterly dismal. It's smaller and barer than the rooms he and Sherlock inhabit on the first floor; the bed is pressed right up against the wall, a hulking shape in the darkness, and a cheap red blind blots out the daylight. It rattles as he winds it up, allowing the cold winter light to flood in.

For a moment, he stands, turning slowly, taking in every aspect of the small area – from the peeling wallpaper, patched with pale squares where pictures once were hung, to the stained carpet – until his eyes finally alight on the old transistor radio perched on a side table.

He twists the knob on the side of the machine he's carrying, and says again, "Hello?" There's a brief lag before his voice repeats back at him from the radio on the table, oddly distorted by feedback.

_They're sort of a 1950's alternative to phones, you see, _Sherlock had told him. _ So someone can transmit a message from one in their room to the one in the hallway. Not a particularly efficient system._

But the room is empty, and both the radios are silent now. He's disappointed, he realises; nothing about this room feels alive, nothing about it seems to want nor welcome him. He puts the radio from the hallway down on a shelf and glances around, trying to pick out a trace of the human life that went on within it God knows how long ago. The air smells of must, heavy and soporific.

John crosses to the window and stands there for a moment, looking out. It's cold there, before the badly-fitting window sashes, but the high, oblique view of the resort is intriguing; far below, the graphite-coloured ocean churns, and beyond the scattering of houses and shops, pale hills fade into the horizon. In the distance, he can just about pick out two figures – Sherlock and Kelly – making their way back from the clifftop, side-by-side.

After a moment, he draws back. There's another door to his left, leading into the bathroom, and he can't resist the temptation to push it open and glance inside. It's dark, of course – windowless – and so small that it's easy to see what's inside. Which is nothing. Empty. Just as he'd expected, really. Moving further in, he can see that the walls are painted a drab mustard-yellow, and the grout is peeling away from the floor tiles like a poster from a wall. Nothing revelatory here, then.

Just as he's turning to go, there's a bang from the neighbouring room – so loud that it might, had he been a lesser man, have made him shout out. As it is, the sound is so unexpected, and so sickeningly loud, that it takes him a few seconds for his breathing to even out and his lurching heart to calm. He guesses almost straight away what's happened – a gust of wind from the hallway has slammed the door shut.

Hands shaking only slightly, he goes back through to the main room. Then, moving fast, he crosses to the door, takes hold of the handle – and can't open it.

This is ridiculous. John clenches his hands tight on the handle, rattling it firmly, but the door stays obstinately shut. He tries turning the key, but it's immediately obvious that the door isn't locked. He kicks it, and gains only a sharp pain in his right big toe. Kneeling down, he squints through the crack. There's nothing to see, apart from a chill breeze that makes his eyes water.

It's hardly unexpected, of course. The guesthouse has got to be pretty old – if the presence of the antique radios are any indication, it's pre-war – and this room clearly hasn't been inhabited for at least a year. Coupled with the cold and damp weather, it's no surprise that the doors have warped a little. What it does mean is that he'll have to eke out the next half-hour or so up here, until Kelly and Sherlock start to wonder where he is.

John sits down on the bed (which lets out a depressing hiss and sinks below his weight) and wishes he'd brought his Ruth Rendell novel. A thought dashes briefly across his mind – perhaps, if he used the radio up here to contact the one in the hallway, Sherlock might hear? – but then he remembers that he brought it up with him, and sighs with frustration.

Over his shoulder, the radio crackles.

John feels a insidious coldness creep into his veins. This time, he knows it's not from the sash window. Slowly, he turns his head. The machine sits on the side table, looking dusty and innocent. Even as he looks, it crackles again, a heavy hum of white noise like a wasp's nest. The sounds are not continuous – there are pauses in-between them, turning them into small staccato buzzes, like the insistent wail of a hungry child.

Keeping one eye on it, he crawls off the bed, edges over to the window and glances out. Sherlock and Kelly are still visible, halfway across a field, but closer now. It takes a moment for the implications of this to sink in – for the time being, he is alone in the guesthouse.

It's then that the panic starts, quiet and understated in the pit of his stomach. He's always been good at keeping it down, though, and although finds himself reluctant to touch the radio he forces his fingers to close around it, lifting it to his ear.

Up close, the noise sounds less like static. It is moist and bubbling, like someone breathing through a wet flannel. _Breathing. _Yes, that's what it is. He listens, and after a moment hears – or thinks he hears – a voice. Why a voice? There's no speech, no words, but the moist rattle sounds so much like breath that the thought, once it has crystallised, refuses to leave. It's a garbled sound. Like a child too young to talk, perhaps. Like a constricted throat struggling, with great effort, to form words.

The thought is so completely horrible that he convulsively flings the radio away from him and stumbles away, backing up against the wall. It lands with a dull thud about four feet away and lies there, still buzzing softly.

Below the window, the two figures are closer now, almost at the gate. John seizes the sash window and tries to push it up, but it won't go – he tugs and tugs with all his strength, but splinters break off in his fingers and then his hand slips and hits the window hard. It hurts, but he's past caring.

_"SHERLOCK!" _he yells, slamming his hand against the window pane, but he's four floors up and the glass is thick and Sherlock doesn't hear him, doesn't turn. He and Kelly are walking up the front path now, talking animatedly about something or other. Any second now they'll be inside. Then they'll be no way of reaching them. And John will have to stay here, in this locked-up lunatic's cell of a room with nothing but the wanting, clamorous presence of that radio.

With that last thought, all vestiges of reason leave him. He begins to beat his hands against the window, pounding and pounding, yelling Sherlock's name till his throat feels raw. His hands are hurting but he barely notices, keeps battering, has to make them hear him, _has to – _

– and then the glass, old and cracked and already coming loose from its rotten framing, gives way, and falls like greenish, glittering rain on to the ground below.


End file.
